On 29 Apr 2011, at 03:17, Nathan Stott wrote: > Originally, (until 0.11 I think?) CouchDB was developed without unit > tests. I take it from this thread it was also developed then without > step-by-step debugging. It's amazing how stable it is and has been in > light of those two facts.
Depends how you're writing code, I think. Some people, me included, and especially in web development, tend to adopt the Throw Enough Shit, See What Sticks approach to software. Engineers and computer scientists tend to take the opposite approach. Knuth famously remarked "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." Any point on that spectrum is a trade-off, and some approaches are more suited to certain applications. I am guessing that database development is more up towards the Knuth end. Maybe that's how Damian codes? I doubt Knuth has any use for unit tests.
