On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 8:30 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:
Nick Coghlan wrote:
On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 9:01 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:
If it's not tested, how do you know it does what you need?
Because my script does what I want. ... they're writing scripts to *get things done*.
"And it doesn't matter whether it's done correctly, so long as SOMETHING gets done!!!" <wink>
So they have only system tests, and not unit tests. (Or at least not to the level you would recommend.) But if the system tests pass, that really is enough. (And yes, there could be bugs exposed later by data that didn't show up in the system tests -- but that is still better than most of the other software in that environment.)
I'm not convinced that requiring coders to write:
given a, b c do f(a, b, c)
instead of
do f(a, b, c) given a, b, c
gets in the way of getting things done.
Nah; people can interrupt their train of thought to scroll up. Doing so doesn't improve their code, but it isn't a deal-breaker. Requiring that order does get in the way of reuse, because burying the lede [ do f(a,b,c) ] makes it a bit harder to find, so there is a stronger temptation to just fork another copy. -jJ