Testing reports

John Ralls jralls at ceridwen.us
Fri Apr 13 11:31:10 EDT 2012


On Apr 13, 2012, at 8:20 AM, John Layman wrote:

>> Chasing down a single test failure, particularly in system tests (as
> opposed to unit tests),
>> takes far more time than writing a good test in the first place.
> 
> If there were actual data to support such a claim, who could disagree?  As
> intuition, however, the claim sounds suspiciously like rationalization.  I'm
> reminded of the old saw about the hazards of asking an engineer the time.
> At what probability does is make no sense to provide against an imaginable
> eventuality?  Good grief!
> 
> An important point the developers of GnuCash need to bear in mind is that
> the economics of the software do not begin and end with them.  The time
> required to investigate why a test failed may be dear to the developer,
> personally, but the cost of poor quality multiplied across the user
> community is far more consequential.  The point which I'd hope we could all
> agree upon is that a delay in putting some degree of effective testing in
> place cannot be justified on grounds of sparing developers menial work.  

OK. The current set of developers are otherwise engaged, so we eagerly await your patches on Bugzilla.

Regards,
John Ralls




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