autotest reminding you to test one thing at a time 2

Posted by Tim Connor Wed, 01 Nov 2006 05:16:00 GMT

I was fixing a bug via TDD (Test Driven Development) and having a bit of trouble. I couldn’t quite get my test to test for the conditions that prevented the bug. As I went upstairs to grab a snack, I realized that my problems was I was conflating two tests together.

I use autotest a lot, but sometimes when I’m doing something I shut it off, because I want to manually run one particular set of tests at need. With a system not quite speedy enough, that sometimes makes sense.

But, as part of my Eureka moment I realized that the reason I had turned off autotest, in this case, was that I wasn’t taking small enough baby-steps. I was breaking too many things at once. If I had tested for each individual thing, and developed by each small test, like I realized to do later, I could have kept autotest on without it blowing up at me.