[Novalug] coding for testing

Mark Smith mark@winksmith.com
Sun Mar 11 03:42:55 EDT 2012


On Fri, Mar 09, 2012 at 04:50:51PM -0500, Jay Hart wrote:
> 1. Who writes the test cases.

QA.

> 2. Do you have a standard definition of done, that the coders, testers, and
> customer agree with?

we have a working agreement of what is "done," but that is generally,
uhm, _flexible_ by the time push comes to shove.

> 3. Lastly, if a bug is uncovered during testing, who fixes it?

development.

> Jay
> 
> > I'm sure they think the code needs to be tested.  I think the problem
> > that I'm trying to indicate, poorly, is that they refuse to create any
> > additional code which, in their estimation, will only be useful to QA.
> >
> > Perhaps another way of wording my question is, what percentage of software
> > development companies make special changes which may benefit just the
> > testing phase?
> >
> > As an example, a particular test we do takes several days to do and is
> > a serious draw on resources.   The hardware we use isn't cheap and the
> > time we take is even more expensive.   There are faster ways of running
> > these tests, but in their estimation, it doesn't seem like the kind of
> > thing that a "regular" customer will ever run into.  Their decision is
> > that this work will not be done because it's only the QA department that
> > has to incur the expense of running this particular test.
> >
> > Another more vague example would, uhm, let's say the creation of a
> > function call that would probably only ever be called regularly from QA.
> > Let's say, further that it is a function that reports the amount of time
> > that some particular operation took.
> >
> > And so on...
> >
> > So, I do believe that they believe there's a need for testing, but they
> > don't want to make any changes to help that process.
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 08, 2012 at 08:46:07PM -0500, John Warren wrote:
> >> My very strong opinion on this is, "Avoiding anything, no matter how
> >> trivial, to help automated and manual testing is a sure sign of some
> >> impending, dark and laborious coder crisis that will make you question why
> >> you work where you work."  Yeah, not good in IMHO.
> >>
> >> On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 8:22 PM, Mark Smith <mark@winksmith.com> wrote:
> >> > I was having a discussion at the office today.  The coders here are
> >> > entirely against writing a single lick of code where it's purpose
> >> > will be to support the testing of the software.
> >> >
> >> > That got me to wondering... I wonder how other software developers
> >> > feel about writing code to help software testing.  Is my company just
> >> > a one-off?  or do the majority of software developers feel the same way?
> >
> > --
> > Mark Smith
> > mark@winksmith.com
> > mark@tux.org
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
> 
> 
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-- 
Mark Smith
mark@winksmith.com
mark@tux.org



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