D For A Web Developer

[Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d]

On 5/3/2014 3:32 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 4/30/2014 1:36 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> One good example is networking tests - if I worked on an airplane I'd
>> love to
>> not test tests that need connectivity with a simple regex.
>
> I am suspicious that testing networks with a unit test is an
> inappropriate use of unit tests.
>
> Unit tests should be testing individual functions. The "network" for
> those tests should be a mockup, not the actual network. A mock network:
>
> 1. can model extreme, unusual, perverse, and corner cases of networks,
> whereas real networks try to avoid that
>
> 2. will generate reproducible results
>
>
> Testing networks should be more of a system test, not a unit test.
>

I'm not sure mock networks can really be used for testing a client-only 
lib of some specific protocol. There may also be other examples.

There's also the question of whether or not D's "unittest {...}" should 
*expect* to be limited to tests that are *technically* "unit tests". 
Currently, "unittest {...}" is useful for more forms of testing than 
just "unit" tests. I think it's debatable whether we want kill off those 
uses without offering a comparable alternative with reasonable migration.