Development log - red & black (1)

Development log - red & black (1)

Red

Software that easy to test.
By Zhang Hui

Mr Z add some backdoor in the debug version of software. He even add a small
console for the application. It's more easy for him to do some kind of testing.
 For example, if we want to test the case of what display when there are over
10000 message. No one will send 10000 message to do such test, it's so expensive
and time-consuming! What he does is add a small language parser in the application.
When inputting words can be parsed by the small language engine, it will trigle
some actions. Because it supports parameters, it's very handy for us to do various
testing. What a great idea! Supposing we add "add inbox 1000", that means to create
1000 messages and store them in inbox. It's so easy, isn't?

Yesterday, I read the chapter of "unit test" of "Dive into python". From the example,
we know that the more early we add "unit test", the more we can get from them.
By "testing first", we can avoid over-design, we can release ealier, we can code
with full confidence, we can code in a graceful way, we can refactor the code anytime,
anywhere without worry about break something else.

To write a programe is not difficult, While it's much more difficult and complicated
to finish a "software". The core idea of developing software is to ensure quality,
meet schedule, within bugdet. So the core of the core is the software quality.
An procedure or mechanism is needed to ensure quality. It's natural for me to adopt
the idea of "test driven development" or "test centered development".

The mature level of development is decided by the level of testing.
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