From: "Przemysław Wojnowski" <esperanto@cumego.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] CONTRIBUTE - writing tests for understanding internals
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 22:08:49 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <5643AE61.1070503@cumego.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <834mgslf34.fsf@gnu.org>
W dniu 11.11.2015 o 16:40, Eli Zaretskii pisze:
>> From: Przemysław Wojnowski <esperanto@cumego.com>
>> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 08:45:23 +0100
>>
>>> Thanks, but I don't think CONTRIBUTE is the right place for
>>> motivation-related text. We should find some other place for that.
>>
>> This was not for motivational purposes, but to tell how to learn about
>> Emacs Internals - like the old part.
>
> The style is quite different: where CONTRIBUTE is about information
> for contributors, the suggested change, with the exception of its
> first sentence, is a motivational text that has no informational value
> for contributors.
I tend to agree that my style of writing is different than the rest of
the document and is a place to improve. That's why I've sent it here.
> More importantly, I disagree with your posit that writing tests is a
> good way of learning about Emacs internals.
Did you write this based on your experience? I did.
It *is* very good way to learn about a project and, in many companies,
is used to introduce new developers. (I do that every time and after
sometime devs tell me that it is a good introduction, because project
at the beginning were to big and overwhelming to them.)
It's very easy to verify this by writing a few tests to a project you
don't know.
> Best tests are written by looking at the spec alone,
> because looking at the implementation will bias you when
> you write the test. That's why tests should ideally be
> written by someone who is not the implementor.
Ideally yes. And new contributors are very close to this ideal, because
they didn't implement the code and have docs as specs.
I submitted a couple of tests to Emacs packages and was writing them
based on available docs (even CLTL2, in case of cl-lib) and I've
learned a lot about those parts.
> I'm sure you are
> familiar with the TDD methodology, whose strong point is precisely
> that you write tests before implementing anything.
"Reality check:" we already have code base. ;-)
Cheers,
Przemysław
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2015-11-11 21:08 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 20+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-11-10 22:48 [PATCH] CONTRIBUTE - writing tests for understanding internals Przemysław Wojnowski
2015-11-10 22:58 ` John Wiegley
2015-11-11 3:36 ` Eli Zaretskii
2015-11-11 7:45 ` Przemysław Wojnowski
2015-11-11 8:26 ` Andreas Röhler
2015-11-11 15:40 ` Eli Zaretskii
2015-11-11 15:40 ` Eli Zaretskii
2015-11-11 21:08 ` Przemysław Wojnowski [this message]
2015-11-11 21:26 ` Eli Zaretskii
2015-11-11 21:36 ` John Wiegley
2015-11-12 3:40 ` Eli Zaretskii
2015-11-11 21:48 ` Przemysław Wojnowski
2015-11-12 7:16 ` Andreas Röhler
2015-11-12 16:15 ` Eli Zaretskii
2015-11-12 20:03 ` Stephen Leake
2015-11-12 20:40 ` Andreas Röhler
2015-11-12 20:55 ` Eli Zaretskii
2015-11-12 21:42 ` Przemysław Wojnowski
2015-11-13 7:33 ` Eli Zaretskii
2015-11-13 8:03 ` Andreas Röhler
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