[fpc-pascal] FPCUnit article/tutorial online.

Tony Pelton tpelton at gmail.com
Mon Oct 10 06:09:31 CEST 2005


i started to write a rather lengthy reply to this note, and realized i
was starting to rant.

so i'm gonna shorten my reply up quite a bit.

i'm a java web app programmer by trade. i use Pascal for fun stuff.

up until a couple of years ago, i went through a series of companies
where i couldn't escape the _nightmare_ of unit testing mantra, being
forced down the development teams throat ... _usually_ with a whole
helping of other ridicoulous development "paradigms" freshly read by
the manager right out of "CIO" magazine.

i will offer this opinion ...

i think generally, and especially the way they've been implemented in
the past where i've worked, they (unit tests) have been a huge waste
of time and a soul sucking experience for the development team.

my last 2 years, i've worked with ONE other senior developer, for a
smallish company, with a web app in production, having done ~6
releases in the last 1.5 years since we went 1.0 with the product.

in terms of scale, i would say it is just a smidgen smaller than the
web application at my last job, where there were 12 developers, 3
managers and a "technical lead".

let me express that in a formula :

webapp1 + 2 developers == 12 developers, 3 managers, lead + webapp2

the current application i work on is light years ahead of the other
one i worked on in terms of stability and quality

what is the difference ?

well, currently, me and my peer don't have several middle managers
dictating our every move.

we don't use RAD "tools"

we use simple, best of breed open source technologies where we can

we write code to solve problems when we think the investment is a
better choice for us in the long run, rather than buying some "kitchen
sink" solution from some vendor whose fancy sales guy took the boss
out to lunch one day.

we don't spend time writing unit tests.

my $0.02 ...

On 10/9/05, L505 <fpc505 at z505.com> wrote:
> Since I don't exactly know what test frameworks are, even after reading about them for the
> past few years, I'm going to ask some risky questions. This is not a flame thrower attempt
> at the test framework advocates, I'm just trying to understand what exactly they do, from a
> "newbie to test frameworks" perspective.
>
> Do test frameworks
>  -cause you to spend lots of time writing test frameworks instead of program code?
>  -even apply to languages with compilers and strong typing?
>  -cause you to write your programs to conform to the test framework, instead of the program
> framework?
>  -have any actual statistics of success?
>  -have popularity statistics that prove they are popular (in the Delphi community) as stated
> in the article?
>  -have any real world examples of how they helped personX fix problemY in significantly less
> time?
>
> Hoping the answers are no, yes, no yes, yes, yes.
>
> --
> L505
> http://z505.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> fpc-pascal maillist  -  fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org
> http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
>



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