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IWETHEY Home / IWETHEY Board / Theory and Practice of Programming Forum / Re: Good point
Post #101,108
by JimWeirich
Picture of JimWeirich
5/9/03 3:05:12 PM
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New Re: Good point
Refactoring without pre-building unit tests is pretty pointless.

Exactly. Refactoring without unit tests is dangerous and I would agree with him in that case.

But advocates of refactoring generally also advocate unit tests. In fact, I first learned about unit tests from reading Fowler's refactoring book. I've been doing most of my coding test-first for the past 3 years and believe it to have markedly improved the quality of my code.

I've become a strong believer in unit tests, and especially letting them drive the design and implementation.

--
-- Jim Weirich jweirich@one.net [link|http://w3.one.net/~jweirich|http://w3.one.net/~jweirich]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct,
not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)
Post #101,111
by admin
Picture of admin
5/9/03 3:10:26 PM
Reply
New Another good point
especially letting them drive the design


Unit tests also point out deficiencies in design. I've had a few instances of "jeez, this API I just designed sucks for this task" while writing the unit tests.
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #101,185
by static
Picture of static
5/10/03 12:19:54 AM
Reply
New Me too.
I've also had the happy experience of refactoring code from a child class to a base class and watching the unit tests confirm I haven't broken anything. :-)

Wade.

Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
 
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please

-- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne.
     Cringely on Refactoring - (tjsinclair) - (41) - May 9, 2003, 11:34:40 AM EDT
         He's still skirting the real issues to make his "point". - (admin) - (39) - May 9, 2003, 11:44:55 AM EDT
             Good point - (tjsinclair) - (38) - May 9, 2003, 11:57:52 AM EDT
                 Do I use unit tests? - (admin) - (34) - May 9, 2003, 12:25:32 PM EDT
                     Apparently my question sounded dumber than it actually was - (tjsinclair) - (33) - May 9, 2003, 12:53:25 PM EDT
                         Lessons to be gleaned: - (admin) - (16) - May 9, 2003, 01:00:45 PM EDT
                             Great stuff! - (tjsinclair) - (2) - May 9, 2003, 01:09:15 PM EDT
                                 Re: Great stuff! - (admin) - May 9, 2003, 02:04:17 PM EDT
                                 C++ unit testing - sounds painful - (tuberculosis) - May 10, 2003, 10:16:03 PM EDT
                             More: - (admin) - (1) - May 9, 2003, 02:14:49 PM EDT
                                 Code coverage - (Simon_Jester) - May 9, 2003, 03:33:25 PM EDT
                             How does JUnit (and the like) deal with web pages? - (drewk) - (5) - May 9, 2003, 02:45:32 PM EDT
                                 Not really specific to PHP. - (admin) - (3) - May 9, 2003, 02:50:06 PM EDT
                                     Also from that page - (drewk) - (2) - May 9, 2003, 03:05:10 PM EDT
                                         HttpUnit is more useful for integration testing. - (admin) - May 9, 2003, 03:08:18 PM EDT
                                         We use PHPUnit where I work. - (static) - May 10, 2003, 12:17:17 AM EDT
                                 I'm experimenting with testing dynamic content ... - (JimWeirich) - May 9, 2003, 05:30:28 PM EDT
                             Can I quote this thread? - (tjsinclair) - (4) - May 9, 2003, 04:15:07 PM EDT
                                 Even better: - (admin) - (2) - May 9, 2003, 04:21:19 PM EDT
                                     No, you can't use my comments - (drewk) - May 9, 2003, 05:10:44 PM EDT
                                     Thanks! - (tjsinclair) - May 9, 2003, 08:43:43 PM EDT
                                 A TDD Example - (JimWeirich) - May 9, 2003, 05:09:24 PM EDT
                         Ooh, he left out the ^ - (tuberculosis) - (15) - May 10, 2003, 10:01:19 PM EDT
                             That's just evil to the core. :-) -NT - (ChrisR) - (1) - May 10, 2003, 11:37:38 PM EDT
                                 It's C++, what do you expect? -NT - (tuberculosis) - May 11, 2003, 05:43:45 PM EDT
                             I would only use that if it were properly commented. -NT - (static) - (12) - May 12, 2003, 08:43:53 AM EDT
                                 I'd probably never use it at all - (tuberculosis) - (11) - May 12, 2003, 10:35:20 AM EDT
                                     Its a cool parlor trick... - (jb4) - (10) - May 12, 2003, 01:08:32 PM EDT
                                         Not even really a C++ issue as such, is it? - (deSitter) - (9) - May 12, 2003, 01:25:21 PM EDT
                                             Its a Duff Device - (tuberculosis) - (5) - May 12, 2003, 08:50:05 PM EDT
                                                 Yep - it's assembler in C -NT - (deSitter) - (4) - May 12, 2003, 11:25:43 PM EDT
                                                     Most ASM Languages have a SWAP instruction. -NT - (ChrisR) - (3) - May 13, 2003, 12:25:46 AM EDT
                                                         Yes, not my point - (deSitter) - (1) - May 13, 2003, 11:18:05 AM EDT
                                                             And my point... - (ChrisR) - May 13, 2003, 11:27:46 AM EDT
                                                         SWAP? - (JimWeirich) - May 13, 2003, 11:20:14 AM EDT
                                             That's ANSI C?!? - (jb4) - (2) - May 14, 2003, 01:46:33 PM EDT
                                                 That's ANSI C?!? ... YES - (JimWeirich) - May 14, 2003, 01:58:08 PM EDT
                                                 Re: That's ANSI C?!? - (deSitter) - May 14, 2003, 02:22:19 PM EDT
                 Re: Good point - (JimWeirich) - (2) - May 9, 2003, 03:05:12 PM EDT
                     Another good point - (admin) - (1) - May 9, 2003, 03:10:26 PM EDT
                         Me too. - (static) - May 10, 2003, 12:19:54 AM EDT
         FWIW, Squeak is undergoing a huge refactoring effort - (tuberculosis) - May 10, 2003, 10:07:09 PM EDT

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