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Simple Smalltalk Testing: With Patterns

• zabzonk 4y ago
  i had read this several times before, a long time ago (i've got a couple of his books somewhere), and my immediate response was (as it is for all moderately complex testing frameworks): "who tests the testers?" i am all in favour of tests, but this is my problem with all but the simplest of them.
  • theamk 4y ago
    For false positives (tests fail on working program), the testers test themselves. Thus happens naturally - a failed test might mean app failure or a test failure. For false negatives (tests pass on broken program), no simple automated detection is possible, after all user cam always write "return true" in check function. Code coverage can help, but it is hard to setup and it's not panacea either. The most practical solution is false negatives are deteced by next level of tests: integration tests or manual tests or bug reports from the field. A few places I have worked on had a rule "every bugfix should be accompanied by the test for it" and it was working pretty well if code reviewrs ate attentive.
    • zabzonk 4y ago
      that was not my point - sorry, i expressed myself badly. i agree with what you say. let me restate: "who will test the testing framework?" and supply a convincing test suite for that framework. i do not want to be debugging some testing framework when a test fails.
  • hitchdev 4y ago
    [dead]