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A comment on Why code review beats testing: evidence from decades of programming research. Parent comment

Re:Why code review beats testing: evidence from decades of p... by nl on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @12:24AM (#3069358)
in Code:

  static final String HELLO = "helo wolrd";
  ...
  out.println(HELLO);
in test:

  input = in.readln(); // yeah massively simplified, I know
  assertEqual(Code.HELLO, input);
pass.

But a developer will (should!) find the error immediately.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why code review beats testing: evidence from decades of p... by boyter on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @05:33AM (#3070088)
That's a bad test though. Its not brittle but assuming it was written in a Tdd manner there should be at least two chances for the developer to catch the bug if they don't use the constant they are testing in the test.

I have no source on this but isn't it bad practice to use constants in your tests? I personally use a new string with the expected value. It forces me to look twice and really consider what I am doing.

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Re:Why code review beats testing: evidence from decades of p... by nl on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @05:46PM (#3073069)
It's a comment on hacker news illustrating a point, not a guide of how to write test cases.

The point is that it is possible to have good test coverage and still have bugs that are best found by humans.

[ Parent | on HN ]