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A new era for software testing

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Re: A new era for software testing

#2

Post by wrxd »

I believe this can work if done on top of traditional testing. I would feel very uneasy to replace deterministic (ok, not always but mostly) test suites with something that is not deterministic at all

Re: A new era for software testing

#3

Post by simianwords »

wrxd wrote: post #2

I believe this can work if done on top of traditional testing. I would feel very uneasy to replace deterministic (ok, not always but mostly) test suites with something that is not deterministic at all

I think this is just TDD or unit test dogma and I’m personally not a fan.

Unit tests and deterministic tests are hard to get right and need to be done at the correct boundary.

I have seen many people dogmatically pushing unit tests religiously but this often leads to very hard to maintain tests that mostly exist just to change along with the main code itself.

A good way to understand if your unit tests are good: are you changing them along with changing your actual code? Then it’s a bad test. I think the argument for “it’s just documentation” is weak.

Re: A new era for software testing

#4

Post by simianwords »

Scenario testing is the new word for it and I think this is a game changer.

Two of the reasons I never liked writing tests is

- they didn’t seem to usually assert much internal logic

- they would have to be maintained along with the original code

I think scenario testing is much better instead because the actual way a person uses a feature hardly changes but the internals might change a lot.

So imagine I’m making an e-commerce website. There are lots of internal mechanisms. I’ll have an agent testing all the functionalities as if it were a customer. This gives me much much more confidence while writing code because it is more uncorellated with the code.

Tomorrow I can change a lot of internals but the testing agent stays the same.

There’s something to note though: not all code is possible to be scenario tested. Like data engineering and other things where the feedback time is huge.

Re: A new era for software testing

#5

Post by fcarraldo »

simianwords wrote: post #3
wrxd wrote: post #2

I believe this can work if done on top of traditional testing. I would feel very uneasy to replace deterministic (ok, not always but mostly) test suites with something that is not deterministic at all

I think this is just TDD or unit test dogma and I’m personally not a fan. Unit tests and deterministic tests are hard to get right and need to be done at the correct boundary. I have seen many people dogmatically pushing unit tests religiously but this often leads to very hard to maintain tests that mostly exist just to change along with the main code itself. A good way to understand if your unit tests are good: are…

I don’t disagree with your point, but there is still value in having unit tests that change along with the code. It’s less than a “proper” test, but when these tests break _unexpectedly_, it’s still more signal than you’d have without them. Like, always changing `file.go` alongside `file_test.go` may be acceptable if you catch errors that impact `serve_test.go` unexpectedly.

Of course, if you’re just watching Claude changing both and saying “LGTM” then it’s not very valuable.

Re: A new era for software testing

#10

Post by hulitu »

simianwords wrote: post #4

Scenario testing is the new word for it and I think this is a game changer. Two of the reasons I never liked writing tests is - they didn’t seem to usually assert much internal logic - they would have to be maintained along with the original code I think scenario testing is much better instead because the actual way a person uses a feature hardly changes but the internals might change a lot. So imagine I’m making an…

> Two of the reasons I never liked writing tests

Are you an engineer ? You must test your "creation". Or would you expect that the microwave owen you just bougth will be tested by your child while getting burned ?

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