Renaissance Developer » Testing

Another JUnit Anti-Pattern

Joe — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 11:07:21 +0000

I’ve just updated the JUnit Anti-Patterns page with another example seen in the wild:

Anti-pattern: Mixing Production and Test Code

While I was there, I also added a link to the Test Smells page on the xUnit Patterns website (the link is on the left hand side in the “External Resources” section).

I guess my next update to that page will be to tweak all the example code snippets to use JUnit 4. They’re all still using JUnit 3 at the moment. It’s definitely time to catch up with on that one.

QA, QC, What’s the Difference?

Joe — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:26:48 +0000

I liked Jason Yip’s posting: No matter how many times you say it, we still don’t need a QA on the team – it really pins down the definition of the QA/QC terms.

In summary:

Quality Assurance (QA): The design and implementation of processes (roles + activities) to ensure quality in a system/product/service.

Quality Control (QC): The design and implementation of processes (roles + activities) to verify the quality of a system/product/service.

QA = prevent defects; QC = detect defects.

Test Driven

Joe — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:00:28 +0000

This is one of those strange examples of synchronicity. I was moderating a message on the JUnit discussion group, when I came across a message by Lasse Koskela, which reminded me of his upcoming book: Test Driven. For a long time I had been planning to go and buy a copy, because I’m very interested in the subject, and I thought it had been published (I’d seen a message on his blog a few months prior that suggested that it was imminent). A few minutes searching online was enough for me to find out that it hadn’t been published yet. That would have been the end of it for the moment, except that a few minutes later, an email arrived from a chap at Manning (the publishers). Lasse had suggested that I might be interested in looking at a review copy, and would I be interested? Sweet!

So the state of play is this: I have a PDF copy of the draft manuscript, which I’ve printed out so I can scrawl all over it. Should be fun, I’ll post a report later.

Moderating JUnit Messages

Joe — Tue, 30 May 2006 12:00:56 +0000

The JUnit mailing list is the place to go when asking about questions not on the FAQ. However, being a moderated list, it can sometimes take a long time for the emails to work their way through the moderation queue. I’ve been stung a few times myself; an email I sent once took 5 days to finally get posted. This makes it very hard to hold an intelligent conversation via the list, as continuity gets broken.

To help fix this situation, J. B. Rainsberger asked for help. Remembering my previous problems, I volunteered, and my offer was accepted. It’s nice to be able to help out in something I believe in, and I’m sure that when I mention my special responsibilities at dinner parties, people will be awed and amazed.

YAJAPU

Joe — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 12:00:07 +0000

Yes, it’s Yet Another JUnit Antipatterns Update. This time, I’ve tried to apply all the feedback I received from the find folks on the JUnit mailing list. Specifically, I posted a notice about my last update on the list, and received an absolute flurry of responses from unit testing luminaries near and far.

As a result of all this, the JUnit Anti-patterns page has been overhauled yet again. The major changes are:

Added section on using the wrong assert
Expanded on the unexpected exceptions section
Expanded on the multiple asserts section
Avoided using the title “Refactorings”
Linked to an explicit license

JUnit Antipatterns Update

Joe — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 12:00:47 +0000

I’ve just updated the JUnit Anti-patterns page with some of the ideas from Alex Garrett’s article on JUnit Anti-patterns (developerWorks). The major anti-pattern additions are:

Superficial Test Coverage
Overly Complex Tests

I’ve also tweaked the styles to fix a few display glitches.

JUnit Antipatterns Doppelganger

Joe — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 12:00:57 +0000

Recently spotted via Google: IBM developerWorks has recently published a new article on… JUnit Antipatterns! The article is quite a good read, as it covers different ground to the Exubero JUnit Antipatterns article. I’ll probably update the Exubero article at some stage to refer to the developerWorks article, and possibly adapt some of its content.

JUnit AntiPatterns Update

Joe — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 12:00:36 +0000

I’ve updated the JUnit AntiPatterns article after receiving a number of emails giving feedback on suggested improvements and new anti-patterns. I’ve made the following changes:

Added sections for Misuse of Assertions and Redundant Assertions, and reorganised the anti-patterns that relate to assertions.
Anti-pattern examples and the refactored solutions are now styled differently.

Multiple Assertions

Joe — Tue, 03 May 2005 12:00:53 +0000

I’ve updated the JUnit AntiPatterns article with a new anti-pattern: Multiple Assertions.

JUnit AntiPatterns

Joe — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 12:00:46 +0000

JUnit AntiPatterns is an article on JUnit worst practices that I have written, in response to some scary examples of software “engineering” that I encountered during code reviews. Feedback is always welcome!