Michael G Schwern wrote:
>
> On Sun, Sep 03, 2000 at 09:05:07PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > I also think this may well be a good place to apply one of the ideas of XP
> > (Extreme Programming, a fairly flexible small-group software design
> > methodology), namely to write test cases *first* in many cases before
> > writing the code, and to seriously consider trying to write unit tests for
> > pretty much every bit of code that you write.
They have a catchy slogan for it. They call it the
test --> code --> design
development cycle.
Of course, the design phase is characterized exclusively as
'refactoring', since they're primarily concerned with Smalltalk.
But even in a big sprawling project like this, 'refactoring' isn't a
bad one-word description.
Also, don't you want to refer more to 'unit tests', rather than
regression testing, when talking about small pieces of code inserted
in pod sections close to each piece of program code. Certainly, these
pieces can be automatically collated in clever ways to attempt
effective overall coverage, but the immediate reward for the
programmer you're trying to entice to use it, is that she can fire off
that '=for testing' snippet every time she touches that code. This is
the big win that the XP people emphasize.
for anyone interested/curious/befuddled:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExtremeProgramming
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CodeUnitTestFirst
