[Chicago] python 3.0 hep

[Ted Pollari]

On Dec 9, 2008, at 9:52 AM, Martin Maney wrote:

> It may be impractical, but he's not wrong: testing is literally trying
> to "prove" a negative (the code has no errors) by showing that this
> case works, and that case works, ....

That's one view/use of testing but it's by far not the only one.

Testing can and is used to assure that bugs, once identified, are  
fixed and not inadvertently reintroduced, for example.

Testing is also used to prove that the code works for at least some  
set of intended inputs/uses.  That's still extremely valuable because  
doing that by hand is time consuming and not guaranteed to be accurate  
if there are a large number of cases.  Making the jump to saying that  
the code has no errors is either faulty logic or an intentional bit of  
exaggeration for arguments' sake.


That's my take at least and I'm sure there are much wiser folks than I  
on this issue.


-tcp