Skip to main content
Software Engineering

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

13
  • I'm speaking specifically of acceptance tests, not unit tests. At any rate, I'm not going to have the opportunity to alter the departmental structure of the company. Need a solution that works with both developers and "developers in test". That said, how would you do your screenshot example before there was something to screenshot? There's actually a LOT of our automated tests that do this, but before anything like that can be automated there has to be something to take a screenshot of. Commented Jun 20, 2011 at 2:49
  • @Crazy Eddie: TDD defines tests for user stories which define the features of the application. The terminology of 'unit test' is often used in this context, but it does not have the same limited meaning that it would in a purely unit-testing methodology (where code coverage would matter, for example). TDD tests features, and scales up to the acceptance-testing level. The use of the term 'unit testing' in the literature is a regrettable point of confusion for many people. As for the screenshot, you have to run the thing successfully once so that approach is only good for regression testing. Commented Jun 20, 2011 at 2:52
  • @Crazy Eddie: with a name like Crazy Eddie, I would expect you to be the champion of challenging pointless inefficient cycles of failure ;-) [yes i read your blog]. Seriously though, nothing is going to change because the developers feel no pain. Let them feel the pain - or maybe offer them some kind of reward for helping - and they will come up with a solution for automated testing, and/or starting writing code that is easier to test. Commented Jun 20, 2011 at 2:56
  • The difference that I see as being most important from my perspective is that they require different areas of expertise. A unit test can, and often is, written in the same language as the application bits they test. Automated acceptance testing on the other hand makes use of whatever language the particular software used to drive the UI responds to. They require different architectures as well, as at least our testers have developed huge libraries of reusable components they adapt for specific needs. Just like a team can involve DB experts vs. code, it seems fine to have test experts. Commented Jun 20, 2011 at 3:00
  • I guess this solves the issue of keeping developers busy while tests are done though. Even if it takes them longer for any given task, it could be worthwhile. I may very well not get the buy in I need though and I imagine the problem to just keep resurfacing until we can figure out how to get the tests written ahead of time or at least in sync. I still don't see any way to solve this issue as the requirement of having something there to drive seems to be a prerequisite of the automation problem. Commented Jun 20, 2011 at 3:05