* Adrian Howard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2007-11-20 16:25]: > I don't get this. Why is saying "I know this test script > outputs 8 test results" at the start better than saying it > at the end?
I assume that if you knew up front how many tests you are going to run, then you’d just say it. So you’d defer the plan in cases where the number of tests is predetermined but maybe hard to precompute, or where it’s variable. So in both cases you are calculating the number at run time, which is immediately subject to more bugs than providing a constant. Additionally, it’s more likely for a bug in the calculation to line up with a bug in the corresponding test code, so that you end up with a plan that matches the number of tests run even though you *intended* to run fewer/more tests. And lastly, even a runtime-calculated predeclared plan separates the test code and calculation code at least in time (while running) and probably also in space (in the source code). Therefore it seems to me that bugs are somewhat less likely to line up. So a deferred plan should be used only if you really can’t determine the number of tests ahead of time or it is *very* hard to do so. Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
