Re:A survey of testing techniques we've found useful
by AdieuToLogic on Saturday April 11, 2020 @10:52AM
(#22841956)
I believe "Design by Contract"[0], or "DbC", is the concept you are describing. In the Wiki page Notes and External Links sections there are some good resources IMHO.
Re:A survey of testing techniques we've found useful
by epdlxjmonad on Saturday April 11, 2020 @11:51AM
(#22842278)
Yes, closely related, but invariants can appear anywhere in the code (like loop invariants), and are less restrictive than pre-conditions and post-conditions which must appear in the beginning and end of methods. So, invariants are more about testing than design.
Arguably, invariants are especially powerful in testing distributed systems:
Re:A survey of testing techniques we've found useful
by cuchoi on Saturday April 11, 2020 @11:22AM
(#22842122)
Aren't these examples of unit tests?
Re:A survey of testing techniques we've found useful
by MaxBarraclough on Saturday April 11, 2020 @12:07PM
(#22842366)
No, as they're runtime asserts baked into the code itself, rather than existing elsewhere.
1. The argument x must not be 0.
2. The variable x must smaller than the variable y.
3. The list foo must be non-empty.
4. The variable x should have value 'Success' if it had value 'Try' in the beginning of the function call.
These 'invariants', or assertions, can be extremely useful for testing the correctness of the code. Put simply, if an invariant is violated (during unit test, integration tests, or system tests), it indicates that either the design or the implementation is wrong. An article on testing methodology would be more appealing if it had some discussion on exploiting invariants/assertions.