On 03/12/11 02:23 PM, Volker Braun wrote:
On Saturday, March 12, 2011 1:49:40 PM UTC, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
There have been several instances of where doctests have been found to be
wrong,
There have been several instances where stated results in published papers
have been found to be wrong :-)
Just because you quote some paper or claim that its obvious to experts in
the field doesn't guarantee that its correct. There is also the issue that
some equation's validity might depend on sign conventions, choices of branch
points, etc. While I of course agree that doctests should be as correct as
possible, I don't think that some bureaucratic act where you demand that
people sign of on doctests is going to help much. If anything, the referee
should use his personal judgement to determine if a doctest is good or not.
In the long run I feel that it is more productive to have code released to
expose it to a larger audience so that they can use it with examples they
are familiar. Release early, and release often :-)
Would you agree the following are reasonable?
1) A doctest should have a comment by it, referencing the trac ticket where the
test was added. In other words, just simply "Trac #1234" if the test was added
on ticket 1234.
2) Either the author or reviewer should justify the doctest.
Or do you believe its fine to have a test, which nobody can justify?
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
Dave
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