"statically defined test suite, perhaps written by others" fairly hits it off. I once had the privilege of supervising a student who was working with the test suite for a major betting chain. (No, I'm not going to name it.) The official test suite was a Microsoft Word document and he was trying to extract as much as he could to turn it into scripts. Too many of the tests had the form "do this, and then look at the screen", with nothing said about what to expect. And some absolutely crucial things were not tested at all. The one that comes to mind is that every bet had to be remembered for a legal minimum of five years.
This is one of the areas where sUnit shines, because Smalltalk shines. You can inject UI events and you can capture UI outputs without leaving the single environment. You use the SAME testing framework for financial calculations, network interactions, and UI. So I do think that sUnit was innovative, just not for running test suites automatically. It would be interesting to see a comparison that involved Cucumber. If you want to talk about tests that the customer can read, you have to say something about Cucumber. I note that the big selling point for COBOL, back in the day, was that it was based on English so managers would be able to read it. Hah sarcastic hah. On Wed, 1 Jan 2025 at 09:16, Yanni Chiu <yannix...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi Koen, > > I understand that as a writer, something like “Nobody thought about > automating…” does more to draw a reader in to reading more of the article, > than something like “Nobody had ever published a public domain framework that > …”. As your reply says, your intended meaning may be “published … for the > first time”, but I think very few readers would take that meaning. In my own > experience, automated testing was a concept I encountered from earlier > programmers, and Richard’s post also confirms that automated testing was > commonly known. > > You’re right about the “open source” environment of the early 90’s. > Employees/programmers were unlikely to publish code into the public domain at > that time. I think Kent was in a unique position to tour various Smalltalk > teams, distill out key processes and techniques, and publish about it. SUnit > is a great distillation of the idea. > > The actual unit test framework code is not the key idea. People knew of using > automated test suites. But flipping to another browser and adding a #testZZZ > method, while coding for your development task, is something that seems to > just emerge from the Smalltalk environment - once you determine that you want > to have a test suite to help you code. Previously, some statically defined > test suite, perhaps written by others, is used to verify code. By putting the > #testZZZ definitions in the hands of the developer, the whole waterfall > coding model is upended. > > Regards, > Yanni > > > On Sun, Dec 29, 2024 at 10:44 AM Koen De Hondt > <k...@all-objects-all-the-time.st> wrote: >> >> Hi Yanni, >> >> Thank you for sharing your story. It gives another view on history. Maybe >> you should share it with a wider audience. >> >> As always, the people publishing about something for the first time get the >> credits. >> >> When I wrote "Nobody thought about automating that process. Until Kent Beck >> did.”, I meant that he was the one who published about SUnit for the first >> time (and that is why I linked to the publication). I am sure that many >> other people, like you and George, had tools to automate tests, in one form >> or another. After all, Smalltalkers build their own tools to automate >> repetitive tasks. That is a super power Smalltalkers have compared to >> developers using other programming languages. >> >> You write about 1993. Back then, it was hard to share code/projects/software >> with the world. These days, people put their code in a public repo. But >> still that does not prove that the underlying ideas are original. It just >> proves that they did something creative with those ideas, just like in 1993. >> But at least it is clear for the rest of the community who is building >> software based on those ideas. >> >> So I think publishing work – even early work –, in the form of code or >> written documents, is crucial to keep a trace of where ideas originate. >> >> Thanks again for sharing. I like stories about the history of software >> development and I enjoyed your story. >> >> Best regards, >> Koen >> >> > On 22 Nov 2024, at 23:10, Yanni Chiu <yannix...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > >> > The blog post has "Nobody thought about automating that process. Until >> > Kent Beck did." That is not accurate, AFAIK. I believe it was in Kent >> > Beck's original EXtreme Programming book where he says the practices >> > were gathered from various Smalltalk shops he consulted at during the >> > Smalltalk heyday in the early 90's. >> > >> > For what it's worth, here's the history I know. Around 1993, in >> > Toronto, I was working at Footprint Software on VisualBanker (a suite >> > of code to support banking that 4 of the 5 major Canadian banks >> > bought). With my programming buddy (no "pair programming" at the time) >> > our task was to build a persistence framework (supporting Relational, >> > ObjectFiler, and in-memory). >> > >> > My task in a previous job was to convert (the AT&T Unix) C compiler to >> > support the "new" ANSI C standard. Thankfully, I was provided with a >> > test suite of C code, so that if it compiled without errors, then the >> > compiler was standard compliant. So, looking for something similar to >> > the ANSI C test suite I'd encountered, I set up test cases where all >> > methods starting with "test" would be run, and ran the tests against >> > all the backend data stores. The next day, my programming buddy >> > (George), who started at 6am (to have a faster commute) tells me this >> > test thing is great, and shows me the UI he built so we could just >> > push a button. We can check the same behaviour for all backends, and >> > we can coordinate our code changes through the tests (to mitigate our >> > different schedule). >> > >> > A year later, the company's product was deemed slow, so they >> > contracted Kent Beck to review our code base. He eventually comes >> > around to us. We showed him what we did with tests, and then he just >> > paused for about a minute staring out the window. We thought we were >> > doing something really bad. A few months later, George said to me "did >> > you see the SUnit thing posted on comp.lang.smalltalk". The basic >> > "test"-prefixed test cases were there, but with the addition of the >> > setUp and tearDown concept. >> > >> > Every once in a while I think to write this up. The "Nobody thought >> > about automating..." words pushed me over this time. Maybe 15 years >> > ago, I was able to find the original comp.lang.smalltalk SUnit >> > posting, but could not locate it this time when I wanted to verify the >> > dates. >> > >> > Yanni Chiu, >> > Smalltalk oldtimer, Toronto >> > >> > On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 8:58 AM Koen De Hondt >> > <k...@all-objects-all-the-time.st> wrote: >> >> >> >> Dear Pharo users and developers, >> >> >> >> I wrote a blog post in which I evaluate SUnit. >> >> >> >> Enjoy reading it! >> >> >> >> Ciao, >> >> Koen >> >>
