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Poll: Do you test your code?

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Re: Poll: Do you test your code?

#51

Post by fauigerzigerk »

brown9-2 wrote: post #38
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #29

We would like to test a lot more but I really don't know how to test some of the critical stuff. Just as an example, how do you test a parser that processes large amounts of sometimes sloppy semi structured text? Whether a particular defect should be classified as a bug in my parser or as a rare glitch in the source data is undecidable until I know how often the defect occurs. What I need is a kind of heuristic test…

I cannot supply individual test cases for everything that could possibly be found in the source data. Perhaps not, but you can supply test cases for known problems you might encounter, as well as ones you've solved after they've been encountered.

Yes, that's what I'm doing, but I feel it's a drop in the bucket.

Re: Poll: Do you test your code?

#52

Post by bemmu »

I don't test as much as I probably should, because it seems cumbersome since I am mostly dealing with APIs like Facebook. For example, if a user revokes their Facebook OAuth app token they get an email notification about that from me, informing them that the app will no longer be able to function because of the expired token.

I am not automatically testing that, perhaps I am missing something, but automating the steps to log in to Facebook and revoke the token and then also making sure that SendGrid sent the email correctly just seem impractical.

Re: Poll: Do you test your code?

#53

Post by stephencanon »

bmj wrote: post #30
stephencanon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very first thing I do when I take over a codebase is to write tests. Without tests, it's impossible to do maintenance work or add functionality in any sort of rigorous fashion--how can you know that your assumptions about how the code works are correct? How can you know that your trivial change didn't break something? Of course, tests don't actually tell you these things. But they can tell you that your assumptio…

Do you always have the time/bandwidth to write these tests? I'm curious what you might do if an old codebase lands in your lap and someone says "here, fix these bugs by the impossible_length_of_time." I appreciate the idea here, and I've done the same in certain circumstances, but typically that means writing tests for bits of functionality that I need to touch.

frobozz nailed it, really. If something can't be done, it is the engineer's responsibility to make that known to his manager, who is responsible for communicating that to whoever is asking for the work.

Re: Poll: Do you test your code?

#54

Post by lightyrs »

Achshar wrote: post #31

I write web apps and I don't do any testing at all. I am also a unit testing newbi. I just run the app and make sure what change I made works. No automated testing what so ever. it just works and I believe it will be an unnecessary over head Is this bad? If yes, how can I unit test my JavaScript?. Plus i always thought UT is for code that compiles, right?

Look into Jasmine BDD for js testing. We use it for all our js and it has greatly improved quality and reliability.

Re: Poll: Do you test your code?

#55

Post by tomgallard »

angersock wrote: post #20
latch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tests are a lot more about design and refactoring than they are about quality.

what what are you even saying i dont even ( More concretely, if you use testing to drive your refactors and architecture--as opposed to, say, finding pain points in normal code or actual design time in preproduction--I would be concerned that you are "guardrail programming", as a gentleman put in a talk I saw recently. When we drive, we don't have guardrails to bounce us back on the road every time we veer off--they'…

I disagree completely, and your comment makes me think you've never seriously used unit testing.

Writing tests makes you think about how pieces of your code interact with each other, dependencies etc.

As an example, if you're trying to test Function A and are finding you need tens of lines of setup code to be able to do so, then that would be a warning sign that you may want to think about refactoring out some of those dependencies

Re: Poll: Do you test your code?

#56

Post by stephencanon »

peteretep wrote: post #10
kevinherron wrote: post #8

I don't believe anybody that says they test all functionality. Most? Sure. All? No way. Not in a non-trivial codebase. Article about the group that writes the space shuttle software, sort of relevant?: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html

Well, there's `all` and there's virtually all. All is 100% branch and statement coverage, and is a big waste of time. When I saw my codebase has 'all' functionality tested, I mean we don't commit code without tests included too. I think that's a pretty reasonable definition.

100% branch and statement coverage doesn't begin to cover "all". Consider:

  double sin(double x) { return x; }
Simply testing x = 0 gives you 100% branch and statement coverage, but I don't think you want to ship just yet =)

Re: Poll: Do you test your code?

#57

Post by rapind »

kevinherron wrote: post #8

I don't believe anybody that says they test all functionality. Most? Sure. All? No way. Not in a non-trivial codebase. Article about the group that writes the space shuttle software, sort of relevant?: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html

Agreed. Missing the option of "Most functionality", or "All functionality within reason". Without that option anything I select would be misleading.

I think it's safe to assume that anyone who selected "All functionality" actually means "Most functionality". Also I think we can assume that a good proportion of people who selected "A few critical" would belong in the "Most" bucket.

Re: Poll: Do you test your code?

#58

Post by davemo »

Achshar wrote: post #31

I write web apps and I don't do any testing at all. I am also a unit testing newbi. I just run the app and make sure what change I made works. No automated testing what so ever. it just works and I believe it will be an unnecessary over head Is this bad? If yes, how can I unit test my JavaScript?. Plus i always thought UT is for code that compiles, right?

I went through an experience where 2 years ago I thought "I hate unit testing, don't know how to do it and don't see the value". 2 years later I think "I enjoy unit testing, know how to do it well, and see the value in unit testing _most_ of the time".

I believe this transformation is entirely to do with the fact that I paired with a brilliant developer every day for 6 months who really helped to answer all my questions and show me how to test a variety of different things. I truly believe that unit testing (and testing in general) is a hard thing to grasp without being able to learn from someone over a long(ish) period of time.

I realized that I hated testing because I didn't know how to do it and wasn't good at it. I also didn't understand what the essence of a unit-test was; my tests would often cross multiple integration boundaries (ie: hit the db and the server) and were really more like bloated integration tests. Once I had sorted that out and was able to see a variety of techniques for testing specific scenarios I realized that I actually enjoyed testing and the satisfaction of knowing my code was covered against defects started to be a big motivator.

To answer your specific question about JavaScript testing, I've been using JasmineBDD[1] for the last 2 years and have found it a joy to use. It really makes testing things easy and has tools that allow you to isolate your tests down to the individual units.

[1] http://pivotal.github.com/jasmine/

Re: Poll: Do you test your code?

#59

Post by tjstankus »

bemmu wrote: post #52

I don't test as much as I probably should, because it seems cumbersome since I am mostly dealing with APIs like Facebook. For example, if a user revokes their Facebook OAuth app token they get an email notification about that from me, informing them that the app will no longer be able to function because of the expired token. I am not automatically testing that, perhaps I am missing something, but automating the step…

You don't want to test external APIs. You probably do want to test how your application behaves in response to using the APIs. One way is to mock the API calls with canned responses. Another way is to use a tool like VCR (https://github.com/myronmarston/vcr) to record and playback API interactions.
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