In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Stefan Behnel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Not to mention that you can sometimes look at awfully trivial code three > times and only see the obvious bug in that code the fourth time you put an > eye on it a good night's sleep later. Or never see it. Lately, I've been using Coverity (static code analysis tool) on a large C++ project. I'm constantly amazed at the stuff it finds which is *so* obvious after it's pointed out, that I just never saw before. > Expecting code paths in a nested if statement with nine conditions that are > not worth testing due to obvious triviality, is pretty hubristic. There's a well known theory in studies of the human brain which says people are capable of processing about 7 +/- 2 pieces of information at once. With much handwaving, that could be applied to testing by saying most people can think through 2 conditionals (4 paths), but it's pushing it when you get to 3 conditionals (8 paths), and once you get to 4 or more, it's probably hopeless to expect somebody to be able to fully understand all the possible code paths. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
