Re: call for more ert tests

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Sebastian Wiesner <lunaryorn@gmail.com> writes:

> Actually, you aren't done… you are just out-sourcing your work, i.e.
> regression testing, to your users.  In the absence of tests, you will
> never realize that your quick change of "li" rendering accidentally
> broke "a" rendering until the first user complains and sends you back
> to the keyboard in order to debug the bug which you introduced.

Sounds unlikely.  When I fix a the rendering, the page is there right in
the buffer as I'm coding, and <a> mess-ups would be pretty immediately
obvious.

And if I miss it, somebody will tell me, as you say.

So in this scenario, having to fiddle with the test cases to make the
change "pass" means more work for me, for a very unlikely gain, which
(in the unlikely case of me making an error!!!) would be discovered by
somebody else.

So there's nothing to gain here for the Emacs developers.

And I think that people writing other highly interactive and non-vital
stuff has started to find this out in general the last few years.  On
Hacker News there's constantly people popping up who've seen the light
-- having too many automatic tests means ossifying the software.  The
TDD nightmare is almost over now, and Emacs survived without gaining too
many useless automatic tests while the fad lasted.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  bloggy blog http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/