undefined | Better HN

0 pointsJoeAltmaier15y ago0 comments

Well, sort of. TDD defines bugs as "things the unit tests catch". And the unit tests are very narrow.

So yes, you record fewer bugs, fix those narrow cases quickly and pretend you're done.

Then it gets to the field, and whatever you didn't catch becomes a 3-alarm fire.

I vastly prefer shakedown tests of the sort where you launch a 'bot army' on cloud servers to thrash the app. Especially if there is Any network/client/server component.

0 comments

newt15y ago

TDD defines bugs as "things the unit tests catch". And the unit tests are very narrow.

I think that if you read the article linked, you'd find that the study didn't work that way. Any study that measures different things between experiment and control groups is not going to be sound.

Then it gets to the field, and whatever you didn't catch becomes a 3-alarm fire.

I've worked on TDD projects, and those are definitely are counted as bugs. Severity 1.

steveklabnik15y ago

... and then you get a regression test, so that bug never happens again. And the regression test is easy to write, since all of your code is already testable, you have all the testing infrastructure in place, etc.

JoeAltmaierOP15y ago

Never happens again? You already have the 3-alarm fire, its too late. That's my point exactly. You catch only what you can think of and write tests to cover.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse