Web Development
I received this e-mail this morning. I wonder what the rest of the community thinks about it?
I have a little bit of problem with this article because it implies that
unit testing has grown because of the popularity of Extreme programming.
Well, I can't see that anyone that's worth their salt could write code
without unit testing it. Early in my career (1989) I was told to learn
these techniques, and have followed them ever since.
What I guess I'm getting tired of is that by explaining that it's a "new"
thing you are giving programmers who don't unit test an "out" by saying that
they have to do Extreme programming in order to use unit testing. Most of
these methods should be expected to be known not thought of as "new."
by old bob
I was amused to read about this whole XP thing.
It was adopted in the mid to late 60s by wise proggies. Unit testing was aided by Test Harnesses that allowed you to implement mock units (I avoid the word 'objects'), feed ranges and permutations of input, record & check output vs expected results.
Thanks for the criticism. I agree that the tip does
mislead in that way.
In Java, I feel quite comfortable saying that the
marketing spiel of eXtreme Programming has definitely
raised the awareness of Unit Testing to a higher level. I
don't know about your particular industry/domains, but
I've often found that the business speed [be it Internet
speed or some other driving force] often forces
developers to ditch sticking to unit testing [ie)
regression testing every night on every unit]. Something
which makes unit testing quicker and easier to develop
is hopefully something that lets a margin of developers
in that common situation able to institute a higher
standard.
You are exactly right that eXtreme Programming has
given people an out. My personal bugbear in XP is not
the unit testing but the code ownership. People take
this to mean no-one owns the code and it can tend
towards anarchy/mess. While it's important not to lock
code on each other, it's also important to make sure
people retain design ownership to areas of the code
and care enough to have a vision for their code areas.
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