Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A new era for software testing

antirez.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 67 posts

Re: A new era for software testing

#11

Post by robotresearcher »

hulitu wrote: post #10
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 ?

'I never liked writing tests' is not the same as 'I don't write tests'.

Re: A new era for software testing

#13

Post by anthonypasq »

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…

are we just re-inventing playwright tests except 10x slower and infinity times more expensive?

i feel like im going insane

Re: A new era for software testing

#14

Post by konart »

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…

>Scenario testing is the new word

How is scenario different from a behavior (as in Behavior-Driven Development)?

Gherkin and things like Cucumber are not something new, are they?

Re: A new era for software testing

#15

Post by rglover »

> I have the feeling that the introduction of automatic QA may raise the bar of quality for new releases of software, and maybe partially compensate for the lower quality of the code produced at high speed with the use of automatic programming.

In theory. The only difference between today and "the aughts" is that we have machines that can spit out a ton of code very quickly.

Nothing has changed about the discipline or honesty around testing (you can skip automated tests even faster now if you wish). You can and should work with AI to write tests, but you have to know the difference between a good test and a "looks good on paper" test in order for it to truly be effective and raise the quality of what you're building.

Re: A new era for software testing

#16

Post by mlmonkey »

Writing unit tests used to be the bane of my existence. I used to hate them. Often times, the LoC for unit tests was 3X the LoC of the actual code.

But not any more! Now I point the LLM to the code and order it to write unit tests, covering all edge cases, etc. I'd rather spend 3 hours arguing with the LLM than writing unit tests! :-D

Re: A new era for software testing

#17

Post by hugs »

anthonypasq wrote: post #13
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…

are we just re-inventing playwright tests except 10x slower and infinity times more expensive? i feel like im going insane

since the rise of agentic coding tools, it feels like we're in a new "eternal september" of people discovering ui end-to-end test automation.

Re: A new era for software testing

#18

Post by inigyou »

hugs wrote: post #17
anthonypasq wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are we just re-inventing playwright tests except 10x slower and infinity times more expensive? i feel like im going insane

since the rise of agentic coding tools, it feels like we're in a new "eternal september" of people discovering ui end-to-end test automation.

People are rediscovering everything. Some people have proposed using a more formal language to tell the AI precisely what code to write. That's a compiler.

Re: A new era for software testing

#19

Post by acdha »

hugs wrote: post #17
anthonypasq wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are we just re-inventing playwright tests except 10x slower and infinity times more expensive? i feel like im going insane

since the rise of agentic coding tools, it feels like we're in a new "eternal september" of people discovering ui end-to-end test automation.

Also the merits of documentation and specs. It’s been eye-opening to see the subset of developers who were almost disdainful about writing documentation for their colleagues but are now tripping over themselves to do so for their clanker.

Re: A new era for software testing

#20

Post by dkn »

mlmonkey wrote: post #16

Writing unit tests used to be the bane of my existence. I used to hate them. Often times, the LoC for unit tests was 3X the LoC of the actual code. But not any more! Now I point the LLM to the code and order it to write unit tests, covering all edge cases, etc. I'd rather spend 3 hours arguing with the LLM than writing unit tests! :-D

I am curious in your experience how often the LLM must also update the tests. I find that if LLMs write tests after the implementation exists, they are either extremely brittle because they are coupled to the implementation, or they cover little of value because they mock everything to the point of testing nothing.
Post reply on HN