The End of Bugs?

#1

Post by sant0sk1 » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 1:16 PM UTC

Re: The End of Bugs?

#2

Post by wallflower » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 2:07 PM UTC

Nice to hear that BDD/TDD is doing well for you. I love RSpec's stories. Unfortunately in a land where using the Spring framework is a big risk (e.g. corporate software development), BDD is not going to be widely adopted, let alone seriously considered. Startups are for those who want to expand their technological comfort zone. Average companies in the other hand, they're fine with remaining average.

Re: The End of Bugs?

#3

Post by richcollins » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 2:35 PM UTC

Writing specs that are incorrect but pass are also bugs. I'm surprised he hasn't run into this situation.

Re: The End of Bugs?

#4

Post by ntoshev » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 2:59 PM UTC

You can't do exploratory programming writing unit tests first, can you?

Re: The End of Bugs?

#5

Post by aditya » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 4:06 PM UTC

Can someone point out any compelling reasons to use RSpec over Test::Unit?

Re: The End of Bugs?

#6

Post by jdale27 » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 4:22 PM UTC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet

Re: The End of Bugs?

#7

Post by gruseom » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 4:29 PM UTC

ntoshev wrote: post #4

You can't do exploratory programming writing unit tests first, can you?

You can. In a way, writing tests first is all about exploring. You're only specifying what you're trying to achieve in the next little while. The test is a device to tell you when you've achieved it. Then you move to the next step. What you're trying to do overall still evolves.

There is a tradeoff. You end up with a longer program that does the same thing - that's bad. On the other hand it works better, and you're likelier to know if you break something - that's good. People argue about whether the bad exceeds the good or vice versa, but surely that can't be answered all one way or the other.

My experience is that this style of programming is well suited for the OO environments that it emerged from. OO object graphs get complex very quickly and you need a device for managing side effects (i.e. unexpected breakage). Unit tests, specifically TDD, are the best currently known device for that. But to me a better approach is to program functionally in a way that eschews (most) side effects and to test one's code by evaluating expressions in a REPL. That gives most of the benefits of unit testing in a much lighter-weight form. I still write the occasional unit test, but only in targeted places where the code has to do something tricky and I want to keep a record of good examples. All I do in that case is put the expressions I've been playing with in the REPL into a function somewhere.

Re: The End of Bugs?

#8

Post by gruseom » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 4:40 PM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #2

Nice to hear that BDD/TDD is doing well for you. I love RSpec's stories. Unfortunately in a land where using the Spring framework is a big risk (e.g. corporate software development), BDD is not going to be widely adopted, let alone seriously considered. Startups are for those who want to expand their technological comfort zone. Average companies in the other hand, they're fine with remaining average.

One hears the exact opposite argument too, which is that these techniques are suited for large/average teams in corporate environments and not at all for startups where people are talented and have to work quickly.