#testing
21 pages tagged.
Articles
Test Desiderata, remade
Rebuilding Beck's Test Desiderata from the field's evidence. What survives cross-author scrutiny, what gets renamed, and what quietly took sides.
Concepts
Automated Checks
The suite runs and judges itself without a human. Beck's "Automated", renamed to concede what automation actually automates.
Behavioral Tests
Tests specify the contract a caller can observe, not the implementation behind it.
Composable Tests
You cannot test every combination of inputs. Structure tests so confidence composes across dimensions of variability, and you beat the combinatorial explosion.
Continuous Integration
Everyone pushes to the mainline at least daily, and every push is verified by an automated build. Running a CI server is not the same thing.
Desiderata in Tension
The eleven properties are not independent. Some reinforce each other, some pull against each other, and you cannot maximize them all at once.
Deterministic Tests
Same code, same result, every run. One flaky test and the suite's verdict stops meaning anything.
Diagnosable Tests
When a test fails, the cause should be obvious from the failure alone. One defect, one failure.
Extreme Programming
A discipline of software development organized as values, principles, and practices. The second edition rebuilt the practice list so a team can adopt one piece at a time.
Fast Tests
Speed is not a nicety; it is the precondition for the tests being run at all.
Minimal Test Data
If you can change a value without changing the result, it's irrelevant data, and irrelevant data hurts.
Predict Success in Production
The macro goal every property serves. Green means safe to ship, within the limits of what was specified.
Readable Tests
A test is documentation that happens to execute. Tell the reader what you're testing, not that you're testing.
Refactoring
Changing a program's structure without changing its observable behavior. Not a named practice in XP's second edition, and load-bearing for two that are.
Run in Any Order
The failure of one test can never make another test look broken. Bache's sharper name for Beck's Isolated.
Structure-Insensitive Tests
A behavior-preserving refactor should never change a test's result. The one property still awaiting its cross-author audit.
Ten-Minute Build
Build the whole system and run all the tests in ten minutes. A budget, deliberately arbitrary, that makes two other practices affordable.
Test Desiderata
Eleven properties, one macro goal, one outcome. A field-grounded remake of Beck's and Bache's lists that keeps what the evidence supports.
Test-First Programming
Write the failing test before the code that satisfies it. A design technique that happens to leave a regression suite behind.
Testing vs. Checking
Checking verifies propositions and automates; testing asks which propositions matter, and doesn't.
Writable Tests
Tests should be cheap to author, but authoring cost is design feedback, not a lever to pull directly.