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Results of our Ruby development survey

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Re: Results of our Ruby development survey

#11

Post by ericb »

KevinMS wrote: post #3
wastedbrains wrote: post #2

Are there any questions we didn't ask or other stats Ruby hackers would find interesting? Perhaps most common used gems or plugins?

The test/notest divide is very roughly 50/50, I'd like to know what percentage of testers found tests to actually help catch bugs, and what percentage of notesters wished they had tests because they are confident tests would have caught eventually discovered bugs sooner. I ask this because the (rails) testing koolaid still tastes funny to me. I wonder if any practice that focuses the attention on code quality, whethe…

Almost every class I develop needs some thing to run it while I build it. I just make that thing Test::Unit in ruby.

I started off with simple scripts for test harnesses long ago, and realized there was no reason not to use a test as my harness. The tests, for me, catch the most stuff initially. The value later on of some basic test cases is less, but that is all bonus as they're already written.

Re: Results of our Ruby development survey

#13

Post by demallien »

KevinMS wrote: post #3
wastedbrains wrote: post #2

Are there any questions we didn't ask or other stats Ruby hackers would find interesting? Perhaps most common used gems or plugins?

The test/notest divide is very roughly 50/50, I'd like to know what percentage of testers found tests to actually help catch bugs, and what percentage of notesters wished they had tests because they are confident tests would have caught eventually discovered bugs sooner. I ask this because the (rails) testing koolaid still tastes funny to me. I wonder if any practice that focuses the attention on code quality, whethe…

I'm not entirely sure that I understand where you are trying to go with this comment. What is the difference between 'testing koolaid' and TDD in your mind, for example?

Personally, I use TDD. My tests are pretty much just a simple way of forcing me to think about the functionality that my app needs, and making sure that that functionality works. I find that it's the quickest way to actually get something up and working, which is a rewarding feeling that I find quite motivating.

I almost never test edge cases etc - but if I do find a bug/receive a bug report, I always write a test that demonstrates the bug before fixing it.

So, does that mean I drunk the testing koolaid? (sorry if that comes across as snarky, it's not meant to be, it's an hinest question).

Re: Results of our Ruby development survey

#14

Post by KevinMS »

bhb wrote: post #9
jm4 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd venture to guess nearly all developers using unit tests would say they are helpful, otherwise they wouldn't be using them. This isn't meant to be snide. I'm just saying that if you already suspect koolaid then any feedback is basically worthless because the only people responding are the ones who have seen measurable results and idiots who drink koolaid, and there's no way to tell the difference. The feedback fro…

Exactly. I'd still love to see real study on whether unit testing is worth it (which our survey doesn't even begin to address, since it's very hard to measure). I think some good studies on that would be invaluable, but it's nearly impossible to control for all the variables, so I'm not holding my breath. Failing that, most of the "evidence" one way or the other is based on asking people who test or don't test - and…

On example of the question would be, "Do your tests ever find bugs, or do they just sit there always working."

No koolaid, how about the post from this moron http://kurt.karmalab.org/articles/2008/02/07/rails-app-witho...

If you look at page 470 of the latest Code Complete, it shows that unit tests have a very low defect detection rate,

Cleanroom software engineering has the best record of quality, but there's no buzz for that now in the ruby community, maybe because it doesnt sell books :-P

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