Re: A simple unit test framework
On May 5, 10:44 pm, Ian Collins <ian-n...@hotmail.com> wrote:
James Kanze wrote:
On May 4, 3:01 pm, anon <a...@no.no> wrote:
The latest trends are to write tests first which demonstrates the
requirements, then code (classes+methods).
The latest trend where? Certainly not in any company concerned
with good management, or quality software.
Have you ever been in charge of a company's software development? I
have and the best thing I ever did to improve both the productivity of
the teams and quality of the code was to introduce eXtreme Programming,
which includes TDD as a core practice.
Our delivery times and field defect rates more than vindicated the change.
I've worked with the people in charge. We evaluated the
procedure, and found that it simply didn't work. Looking at
other companies as well, none practicing eXtreme Programming
seem to be shipping products of very high quality. In fact, the
companies I've seen using it generally don't have the mechanisms
in place to actually measure quality or productivity, so they
don't know what the impact was.
When I actually talk to the engineers involved, it turns out
that e.g. they weren't using any accepted means of achieving
quality before. It's certain that adopting TDD will improve
things if there was no testing what so ever previously.
Similarly, pair programming is more cost efficient that never
letting a second programmer look at, or at least understand,
another programmer's code, even if it is a magnitude or more
less efficient than a well run code review. Compared to
established good practices, however, most of the suggestions in
eXtreme Programming represent a step backwards.
--
James Kanze (Gabi Software) email: james.kanze@gmail.com
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