[Pdx-pm] sneaking tests into work

[Eric Wilhelm]

# from Josh Heumann
# on Tuesday 20 February 2007 02:36 am:

>If they're not interested or convinced, just start quietly writing
> tests for your own stuff.  When your tests start catching otherwise
> uncatchable bugs, you can say, "Hey, I caught this bug before it went
> into production.  And it was alllll thanks to testing!"

If you're under a lot of time pressure, you might be told that you 
shouldn't be stopping to write tests.  In this case, making them part 
of your development should help.  If you use the test as the 
prototype/demo, you'll usually get done faster than if you went through 
the frontend of a large system while debugging (e.g. manually messing 
with the database or hitting refresh in the browser/gui.)  This assumes 
that you can get your fixtures built without a big delay, so usually 
you need to start small -- testing things that don't require a lot of 
environment setup.

The fact that the test then stays around to self-check the functionality 
becomes a freebie.

--Eric
-- 
The opinions expressed in this e-mail were randomly generated by
the computer and do not necessarily reflect the views of its owner.
--Management
---------------------------------------------------
    http://scratchcomputing.com
---------------------------------------------------