in reply to Re^3: Does anybody write tests first?
in thread Does anybody write tests first?
Testing that perl can load a module and converting the result into a 0.05% change in a statistic is stupid.
A simple sanity check before deployment might simply check that everything loads correctly. As you know, use does more than just load. It actually executes code, in some cases. If the environment has changed, the config has changed (as it often does when you go to production), just loading a module might break.
One might have modules that are rarely used, or loaded dynamically via require. If your other testing isn't very good, at least you can check these rare cases with a quick Test::More::use_ok.
If someone broke a module such that it doesn't load, I want to show that before I get ten minutes into another (manual) test that depends on it.
Certainly there are ways to misuse a simple "does this load" test, but they are not without value.