So, LL, going to start unit testing anytime soon?

Wow. Ouch... That's just silly. Are we sure that LL isn't involved with or subsidized by the government, that's the only way I can understand that sort of backassedness. I'm surprised we haven't seen MORE problems, sheesh.

And, most importantly, Eggy, can I have an amalgamated name too?

I love "oeuf"!! I have to control myself from stealing it to use for you myself.

Ok, I get the contraction now. I thought it was K like something political, or something.

Carry on, then, Eggy!

coco

P.S. Surely we are just misunderstanding something in all this testing thing. It would be nuts to throw everything in, then try, later, to figure out which of all of everything is causing some problem.

Okay -- let's put this straight --

unit testing compiled (C, Java, etc) code would be a gloriously mind-numbing and SLOW process.

unit testing is more appropriate in dynamic high-level languages like Ruby, Python, et al.

Considering most of SL's functional code I'm betting isn't written in Python -- it's obvious they wouldn't do a lot of unit testing. There are other ways to manage and test compiled applications. Like version control systems for example.

If there are more perceived bugs or performance degredation -- it's not just because they don't unit test. If they did, you wouldn't see as rapid a release cycle as LL has been keeping up. If you want to see maybe a year or more between versions, then by all means encourage it and see if LL responds. Otherwise, lets accept it and find more productive and creative ways to solve our problems than pointing our fingers at the black obelisk.

The only person I ever fired was because they wouldn't unit test.

Do you know how freaking frustrating it is developing with someone elses code when it hasn't been unit tested?

some have asked if they're missing something.
the answer is yes - a little bit.

LL not unit testing does not mean that they do not test at all.
Unit testing is automated testing done around each "modular piece" of an application.
What size piece you call a unit varies from company to company, language to language, project to project. In C++ (in which my unit tests run faster than my colleague's JAVA projects, Icon ) I can choose between small libraries, .CPP files, or indivisual classes, for example. You eventually just get a feel for the right size

Some people write a unit test for each unit, before even writing the unit itself. Programming is sometimes like art, you gotta know when to stop. Well as soon as your unit passes its tests completely - you're finished. (A well-designed unit test is about the best spec a developer can be given)

BUT - the main focus of unit tests in the context of this discussion is that whenever a devloper makes any changes to a unit - they are required to run the unit through its specific unit test and ensure that it passes completely before they throw the changes back into the main system. This basically lets a developer know that while he was fixing this little bit over here - he ended up breaking that little bit over there. All before he even hands the new code over to the human testers.

In a (simplified) nutshell - there should only ever be bugs in new features. Exisiting features should never be broken by the addition of new stuff.

OK - just hit the size of my hand - here endeth the lesson

Ah, no. Not even remotely. Essentially all modern Java code is unit tested with JUnit http://junit.org/, every Java IDE has built-in JUnit testing support so you can see green-bar when tests pass or red-bar when tests fail, and Ant, the standard Java build tool, has JUnit integrated. Yes, writing Java code is what I do for a living.

C and C++ use CUnit (unfortunate name that it is) and CPPUnit, and have nearly as good tool support.

I also write a lot of Python code, and there is no overall difference in how easy or hard it is to test; doctest is convenient, but dynamically-typed languages require two or more times as much testing because the compiler can't catch any errors for you.

Unit testing feels good and makes better software. It is absolutely shameful to write code without it.

I know what unit testing is, but I stand corrected.

I've never worked professionally in C/Java projects yet. Therefore I just assumed that the compile, test, rewrite, recompile process would be a pain to production. I used to do lots of PERL, then python/php, and now I'm trying to break into Ruby. Unit testing in those languages in my experience is rather simple do to their dynamic nature. More complex I suppose, but they are interpreted so it's not difficult to catch errors.

Thanks for the info guys -- btw

Well said.

I just proposed "Prop: 1629 - LSL Unit Testing Framework"
at
http://secondlife.com/vote/
Please go there and vote for it.

I miss blaze... and Eggy, don't call me Flypaper!

*cough*







Necroposter.

P2

Flypaper