in reply to Re^3: Testing IS Development
in thread Testing IS Development
True. OTOH, I find that writing tests forces me to codify and explicitly state my assumptions (even if not in a form the typical end-user would understand), which, in turn, forces me to think about and identify those assumptions.That is only added value if you don't think about assumptions when you are coding.
I generally do. I don't suddenly consider assumptions more when I code tests than when I write write code. And I'm not talking about assumptions like "snow is always white". I'm talking "assume the data we're interested in is in table X in database Y on server Z" and I assume that because the company wiki says so. But then it turns out that table Z.Y.X is obsolete, and currently the data lives in tables A, B, C on database D on server E. Testing is not going to find that, because when you make your tests, you make mock data from table Z.Y.X. Tests succeed. Code would have worked fine if indeed the report used data from table Z.Y.X. But since the assumption is wrong - the entire chain falls.