About the Expressiveness of D

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 2013-04-03 20:08, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

> In general, I agree, because I think that straight-forward tests that avoid
> loops and the like are far less error-prone, and you need the tests to not be
> buggy. I don't want to have to test my test code to make sure that it works
> correctly.
>
> However, I _do_ think that there's something to be said for refactoring the
> tests later (after the code supposedly fully works) to use loops and other
> more complicated constructs, because not only can that lead to more compact
> tests, but it also makes it much easier to make the tests more thorough
> (without taking many more lines of code). I just think that _starting out_
> with the more complicated tests is not necessarily a good idea. Treating unit
> testing code as if it were the same is normal code doesn't make sense to me,
> if nothing else, because that would indicate that you're going to have to test
> your test code, since normal code is complicated enough to require testing.
> But Andrei and I have argued about this before, and I don't expect us to agree
> ever on it.

I do refactor tests, but mostly the data. At work I think we have pretty 
DRY tests, mostly the data. Using factories and other functionality to 
keep the code simple and DRY. "validate_postal_code" is a function 
written specifically for the tests above to keep it DRY.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg