[erlang-questions] test driven development

[Ulf Wiger]

2007/11/25, Ulf Wiger <ulf@REDACTED>:
>
> That's one reason why it took longer to build
> a considerable automated test suite. Nowadays, it /is/ considerable,
> with well over 10,000 test cases, most automated (as far as I know).

One problem with having test suites this large is that they become
a maintenance problem: whenever you consider changing an interface,
you have to consider which parts of nearly a million lines of test code
use that interface... To make matters worse, some test suites may
even use undocumented functions (which of course has its advantages,
but certainly not from a maintenance perspective).

This is a very good reason to look at things like QuickCheck, IMHO.
Essentially, you specify the rules and basic building blocks of the
testing, and then let a tool come up with all possible combinations.
This radically cuts down on the amount of test code that needs to
be written, and thus also the maintenance cost of the test code.

BR,
Ulf W