cwash into software

In a recent tech talk, I watched Miško Hevery propose an interesting challenge to his audience: start a toy project and try to write the code with no if-else or switch blocks at all. None at all?  Before thinking about how to do this, why would you want to do it in the first place?  On the surface, it may seem to the unassuming a bit counter-intuitive.  Comparison-based branching is at the heart of programming, and the concept of an if-else or switch block is almost universal, existing in most every programming language ever devised.  What’s Hevery’s agenda with this exercise – and what can possibly be gained from trying to write a program without branching entirely?

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Update: I cleaned up the example based on Rogerio’s comments.

Recently I stumbled onto JMockit and have been pretty impressed with the flexibility of the approach it takes.

Many mocking frameworks seem to take an elitist attitude toward testable code, not attempting to solve certain problems in favor of guiding one toward a more testable design. It appears JMockit is a response to this. (continue reading…)

As of JUnit 4.4, if you happen to peek into the distributed JAR you’ll notice something a little off: in addition to the org.junit.* packages there is this a funny-looking org.hamcrest.* package sticking out like a sore thumb. You may have seen other projects pick up a dependency on Hamcrest lately as well, and I bet you’re wondering what it is. Let’s get to the bottom of it. (continue reading…)

I just read Your Unit Tests Lie to You by Janusz Gorycki and I was going to leave a comment there, but thought it was more appropriate to expand my comments off into their own thing.  For those that haven’t read the article, its basic premise is to grab hold of the nearest “test infected” reader and shake the warm and fuzzy out of them.  It paints the short sightedness of many recent “unit testing” converts as living in a dream world where unit tests should replace formal testing. It follows with many sentiments I’ve read (and written about here) for a while now.  It’s not that I disagree with what is being said in the article, or its tone for that matter; most of what is being said is spot on.  Unit testing is definitely not a silver bullet.  If you read my blog often, you no doubt get that. The article ends:

So please, don’t fire your QA department just yet. Their job is still important, even if you unit test.

So to Janusz, the fundamental problem here is a general ignorance of the purposes behind a unit test suite.  I agree 100% that’s the primary factor behind his problem.  What don’t we agree on?  Semantics.  But semantics are important!  How far do we have to go for a true zen-understanding of this issue?  Not far.  Indulge me — (continue reading…)