On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 3:13 PM, Georg Baum <georg.b...@post.rwth-aachen.de> wrote: > Kornel Benko wrote: > >> Am Samstag, 5. Januar 2013 um 14:01:15, schrieb Scott Kostyshak >> <skost...@lyx.org> >>> >>> Good to hear. Now everyone has one less excuse for writing tests. >>> Speaking of which, do you know why no one writes any tests? >> >> It's standard between developers I met in my life :( >> >> I for one try to convert all available tests to be useful with cmake, >> so not even I wrote a single test yet. >> >>> It seems >>> to me that only you, Georg and Tommaso like tests. > > I don't like tests, and I believe nobody does. But I've made the experience > that some well designed automated tests find bugs that you would never find > by manual testing, some of them of the brown paper bag category. And usually > they save you time, since you can fix the bugs while you are still familiar > with the code in question. So the only reason why I try to maintain tests is > lazyness.
I guess this is a sort of "long-term laziness", which is productive. >> This partly may be, because many of the developers use automake. >> In cmake it is so much easier to make tests having unified looking, >> but I don't dare to say it too loudly ... > > Don't worry, IMO the autotools test support is far too limited. > >>> Note that I sent this email just to you. I don't want to be critical >>> on the list (at least not until I know a little more what I'm talking >>> about). > > I don't see any problem with criticism as long as it is constructive. Even > if it turns out to be based on limited knowledge, somebody will tell you, > and you learn something. Otherwise fellow developers can learn something > from you. Thanks for the encouragement. I think that the word "constructive" implies a certain level of knowledge, which I just don't have yet. Perhaps a good alternative to constructive criticism in this case is to ask questions. This way I can be transparent about asking for help rather than pretending I'm giving help. I'm going to start a new email on this topic with some questions. Thanks, Scott
