InfoQ

InfoQ

News

My Bookmarks

Login or Register to enable bookmarks for unlimited time.

The content has been bookmarked!

There was an error bookmarking this content! Please retry.

Archeology: Testing Sacred Text Found

Posted by Deborah Hartmann Preuss on Apr 28, 2007

Sections
Process & Practices
Topics
Agile ,
Agile Techniques
Tags
Fun ,
Testing ,
TDD
Alberto Savoia of Agitar Software has found and translated for the Artima Blog an ancient treasure: "The Way of Testivus - Unit Testing Wisdom From An Ancient Software Start-up," which turned out to be some good advice on developer and unit testing, packaged as twelve fake, pretentious, and somewhat cryptic bits of ancient Eastern wisdom  - but good for a laugh.

Subtitled "Less Unit Testing Dogma, More Unit Testing Karma," the article recounts the tale of a Himalayan expedition that uncovered an unprecedented text:
Among the many amazing things they discovered inside the cave was the most amazing thing: a note left by one of the programmers:
“We have finished the release ahead of schedule – again. All the tests pass, so we are taking the rest of the week off. We are going sailing.”
What was the secret of these ancient programmers? The expeditioners searched each cubicle for clues. In addition to various Dilbert™ calendars, they found “The Way of Testivus”. Who wrote this mysterious booklet?

Is the content of this text responsible for these ancient programmers being able to complete projects ahead of schedule?
The article includes the full text of The Way of Testivus, including explanations and profound poetry for each of the 12 principles:

If you write code, write tests.
Don’t get stuck on unit testing dogma.
Embrace unit testing karma.
Think of code and test as one.
The test is more important than the unit.
The best time to test is when the code is fresh.
Tests not run waste away.
An imperfect test today is better than a perfect test someday.
An ugly test is better than no test.
Sometimes, the test justifies the means.
Only fools use no tools.
Good tests fail.


Here is just a sample from The Way of Testivus:
The pupil asked the master programmer:
“When can I stop writing tests?”

The master answered:
“When you stop writing code.”

The pupil asked:
“When do I stop writing code?”

The master answered:
“When you become a manager.”

The pupil trembled and asked:
“When do I become a manager?”

The master answered:
“When you stop writing tests.”

The pupil rushed to write some tests.
He left skid marks.

If the code deserves to be written,
it deserves to have tests.


Related news:
Good Agile Karma by Gunjan Doshi & Deborah Hartmann.

Related Sponsor

In today’s hyper-competitive world, later may be too late to adopt Agile development and this Roadmap for Success will help you get started. Download "Agile Development: A Manager's Roadmap for Success" now!

No comments

Watch Thread Reply

Educational Content

10 tips on how to prevent business value risk

One category of risk that project teams need to ensure they address is business value failure – delivering a product that fails to provide value for the business investor.

Interview: Software Systems Architecture: Working With Stakeholders Using Viewpoints and Perspectives

InfoQ spoke to the authors of Software Systems Architecture on a couple of new topics, the System Context viewpoint and Agile, which have been added to the second edition.

Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Alex Papadimoulis discusses ugly code, where it comes from, how to avoid it, and how to get rid of it.

Architecting Visa for Massive Scale and Continuous Innovation

John Davies examines Visa’s architecture and shows how enterprises have architected complex integrations incorporating Hadoop, memcached, Ruby on Rails, and others to deliver innovative solutions.

Max Protect: Scalability and Caching at ESPN.com

Sean Comerford unveils ESPN.com’s architecture, what components are used and why, and the current changes the website goes through.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Enterprise Agile Adoption

Are there repeated patterns of failure on Enterprise Agile Enablement efforts? Sanjiv and Arlen discuss Seven Deadly Sins to avoid when adopting Agile in an enterprise.

Questions for an Enterprise Architect

Erik Dörnenburg answers: What is Enterprise and Evolutionary Architecture?, discussing 4 issues: Turning strategy into execution, Ensuring conformance, Where do the architects sit? Buying or building?

Wrap Your SQL Head Around Riak MapReduce

Sean Cribbs explains what Map-Reduce and Riak are, why and how to use Map-Reduce with Riak, and how to convert SQL queries into their Map-Reduce equivalents.