As discussed during the April 2015 meeting, there is interest in having occasional meetings devoted to panel sessions on various topics of interest. After some thought and after talking to some members, I’m going to try and organize this for the three summer months. Some of the topics that I’ve heard mentioned are testing, development processes, the use of estimation in development processes, and the use (or lack of use) of types in functional languages.
The Topic
For June we will discuss the topic of automated testing. I use the ‘automated’ qualifier to rule out the various forms of testing that involve real humans using the product. For this panel we want to focus on testing that is the result of code being written to perform the tests and determine the results in an automated way.
Here’s some quotes and resources to get the thoughts and opinions flowing.
“No amount of testing can prove a software right, a single test can prove a software wrong.” (Amir Ghahrai)
“More than the act of testing, the act of designing tests is one of the best bug preventers known.” (Boris Beizer)
“If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.” (Edsger Dijkstra)
“The key is to test the areas that you are most worried about going wrong. That way you get the most benefit for your testing effort. It is better to write and run incomplete tests than not to run complete tests” (Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, John Brant, William Opdyke, and Don Roberts, 1999. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code. Addison-Wesley.)
- Is TDD Dead?
- Why Most Unit Testing is Waste (pdf)
- Seque (pdf)
- Coplien and Martin Debate TDD, CDD and Professionalism (video)
- Rich Hickey Q&A by Michael Fogus
- Simple Made Easy (video)
- Clojure and testing
The Process
If you have an opinion on the matter and want to represent that opinion as one of the panelists then send an email to Bret Young with 1 to 4 sentences (just be brief) stating your opinion. If there are enough submissions, 3 or 4 will be selected to be on the panel so that a range of opinions are represented.
The Format
During the June meeting (June 2, 2015), each panelist will be given equal time to state their position. Then there will a time of Q&A between the panelists and those attending the meeting.