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Testing is better than data structures and algorithms

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Re: Testing is better than data structures and algorithms

#51

Post by Jtsummers »

GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #48
Jtsummers wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers. It spends a lot of time on how to introduce testability into existing software systems that were not designed for testing. Property-Based Testing with PropEr, Erlang, and Elixir by Fred Hebert. While a book about a particular tool (PropEr) and pair of languages (Erlang and Elixir), it's a solid introduction to property-based testing. The techniques described t…

TDD is a development methodology, not a testing methodology. The main thing it does is check whether the developer implemented what they thought they should be implementing, which is not necessarily what the spec actually says to implement or what the end user expects.

It's still a useful technique and way to apply testing to development. But yes, it's not the best resource in telling you what tests to write, more about how they can be applied effectively. Which is a skill that seems absent in many professionals.

Re: Testing is better than data structures and algorithms

#52

Post by alabhyajindal »

chamomeal wrote: post #50
matheusmoreira wrote: post #32

> Of course some engineers need to implement hash tables, or sorting algorithms or whatever. > We love those engineers: they write libraries we can use off the shelf so we don’t have to implement them ourselves. The world needs to love "infrastructure developers" more. To me it seems only the killer app writing crowd is valued. Nobody really thinks about the work that goes into programming languages, libraries and to…

Dang I got this book a few weeks ago and still haven’t cracked it open. Maybe today is the day

This might be useful: https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/index.html

Re: Testing is better than data structures and algorithms

#53

Post by JackSlateur »

I think the author is mislead

Let's grab a simple use case: some basic CRUD http API. Easy, you say, no need to know fancy stuff ! Just test it and that's all.

You do your test, all good, you can roll in production !

But sadly, in production, you have multiple users (what an idea ..). Suddenly, your CRUD api has become a concurrent system. Suddenly, you have data corruption, because you never thought about anything about that, and "your tests were green".

Algorithms are the backbone tools of programming. Knowing them help us, ignoring them burdens us.

Re: Testing is better than data structures and algorithms

#54

Post by KevinMS »

nice_byte wrote: post #7

ignore this advice. spend plenty of time studying data structures and algorithms as well as computer architecture. these are actually difficult things that take a long time to understand and will have a positive impact on your career. study the underlying disciplines of your preferred domain. in general, focus on more fundamental things and limit the amount of time you spend on stupid shit like frameworks, build syst…

> "testing" is not fundamental. there is no real skill to be learned there, it's just one of those things that will find a way to steal your time anyway so there is no point in focusing actively on it.

that's an edgy take and a red flag

Re: Testing is better than data structures and algorithms

#55

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

general1465 wrote: post #36
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #11

I agree with the article, but I'll bet a lot of others, don't. Discussions on Code Quality, don't fare well, here. Wouldn't surprise me, if the article already has flags. Of course, "testing," is in the eye of the beholder. Some folks are completely into TDD, and insist that you need to have 100% code coverage tests, before writing one line of application code, and some folks think that 100% code coverage unit tests,…

Testing, especially vstest.console.exe in Visual Studio has carried my business really far. I have accumulated thousands of tests on my codebase usually based on customer requirements or on past bugs which I have been trying to replicate. I think that a lot of people dislike testing because a lot of tests can run for hours. In my case it is almost 6 hours from start to finish. However as a software developer I have a…

I have not done it, myself, but I think that Xcode, for Apple stuff, can parallelize tests, across multiple machines (maybe VMs?).

I would assume that Microsoft systems could do the same.

Re: Testing is better than data structures and algorithms

#57

Post by wubrr »

JackSlateur wrote: post #53

I think the author is mislead Let's grab a simple use case: some basic CRUD http API. Easy, you say, no need to know fancy stuff ! Just test it and that's all. You do your test, all good, you can roll in production ! But sadly, in production, you have multiple users (what an idea ..). Suddenly, your CRUD api has become a concurrent system. Suddenly, you have data corruption, because you never thought about anything a…

I mean, in your example you just have an incomplete test suite. (Though writing a complete one is often unrealistic)

While understanding algorithms and data structures is important, the only way you really know how well it works, and how well it's implemented is by thoroughly testing it. There are an infinite amount of clever algorithms out there with terrible implementations.

You need both.

Re: Testing is better than data structures and algorithms

#58

Post by matheusmoreira »

chamomeal wrote: post #50
matheusmoreira wrote: post #32

> Of course some engineers need to implement hash tables, or sorting algorithms or whatever. > We love those engineers: they write libraries we can use off the shelf so we don’t have to implement them ourselves. The world needs to love "infrastructure developers" more. To me it seems only the killer app writing crowd is valued. Nobody really thinks about the work that goes into programming languages, libraries and to…

Dang I got this book a few weeks ago and still haven’t cracked it open. Maybe today is the day

The algorithm I'm talking about is at the very end of the book. If you start reading it from start to finish you might stop before you reach it. Certainly happened to me. Someone had to point it out for me to realize SICP had the answer all along.

https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Computer_Science/Prog...

The explicit control evaluator. It's a register and stack machine which evaluates lisp expressions without transforming them into bytecode.

Re: Testing is better than data structures and algorithms

#59

Post by JackSlateur »

wubrr wrote: post #57
JackSlateur wrote: post #53

I think the author is mislead Let's grab a simple use case: some basic CRUD http API. Easy, you say, no need to know fancy stuff ! Just test it and that's all. You do your test, all good, you can roll in production ! But sadly, in production, you have multiple users (what an idea ..). Suddenly, your CRUD api has become a concurrent system. Suddenly, you have data corruption, because you never thought about anything a…

I mean, in your example you just have an incomplete test suite. (Though writing a complete one is often unrealistic) While understanding algorithms and data structures is important, the only way you really know how well it works, and how well it's implemented is by thoroughly testing it. There are an infinite amount of clever algorithms out there with terrible implementations. You need both.

Testing concurrency is extremely hard

For instance, get sql queries; You ran them, and you have no issue; Is your code sane ? Or is it because one query ran 10ms earlier and, thus, you avoided the issue ?

I truly wonder if there is real world tests around this; I bet there is only algorithm and fuzzing;

Re: Testing is better than data structures and algorithms

#60

Post by danielmarkbruce »

mamcx wrote: post #45
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #18

This will annoy a lot of folks, but: 1 - If you work on large scale software systems, especially infrastructure software of most types then you need to know and understand DSA and feel it in your bones . 2 - Most people work on crud apps or similar and don't really need to know this stuff. Many people in this camp don't realize that people working on 1 really do need to know this stuff. What someone says on this topi…

> Most people work on crud apps or similar CRUD apps are the ones that become more complex, not less. The idea that a "CRUD app" is the poster child of simplicity is mega-misleading. Building a ERP or similar will eat you alive in forms that making a total OS from scratch with all the features and more of linux not. (Probably the only part that is hard as "crud apps" is the drivers, and that is because you see what k…

I didn't mention the word complex nor imply it. Complexity of an application and scale aren't the same thing.
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