Re: [Gnu-arch-users] more on the merge-fest

[Andrew Suffield]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 07:47:30PM -0800, Samuel A. Falvo II wrote:
> On Tuesday 25 November 2003 07:37 pm, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> > Uhh, no. It's got absolutely nothing to do with the granularity of the
> > tests. It's entirely to do with the proximity of the cause and effect.
> >
> > If cause and effect are separated by 500 lines of code, then no amount
> > of testing in 20-line chunks is going to demonstrate the problem.
> 
> Uhh, yes.  Because those intervening 500 lines of code must, themselves, 
> also be unit-tested.

So, now you know that somewhere in that 500 line chunk lies a bug. Are
you seriously suggesting that you can often spot it by inspection?

> > Tests just find problems. They don't (and can't) indicate their
> > cause. At best you can hope to spot it by inspection, which only
> > happens when a) the cause is nearby, and b) you're lucky.
> 
> The experiences of thousands of other programmers elect to disagree with 
> you, myself included.

I can say the exact same thing, only all of mine are holding
gerbils. Nyah! Beat that!

-- 
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