Lessons Learned From 10 Years Of Testing

Lessons Learned From Ten Years Of
Testing
© Chris Hartjes @grmpyprogrammer - Symfony Live Berlin (Oktober 27, 2017) 1

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TL;DR -- Tests are made of people!

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This talk contains no code or tests
(Sorry, not sorry)

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December 2002
I am six months into working on a
poorly-constructed dating web application where he
made most of the mistakes himself with the help of
other people who didn't know any better

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Formula for burnout
— super-long commute
— "mandatory" overtime

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The Launch Crashed Hard
— so many assumptions were wrong

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"Hey Chris, I think you should read this!"

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It was the moment that
changed everything for me

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It was the moment that changed everything for me
Not even remotely kidding

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So what were the tools?
— SimpleTest
— Lots of swearing

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PHPUnit hadn't even been
released yet!

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So li!le PHP-speciﬁc testing info was available
Caused much sadness

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Lesson Number One
Having one person enthusiastic about writing tests
simply isn't enough

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Cowboy Testing For Anger And Sadness
You can start off being the only one writing tests...

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Cowboy Testing For Anger And Sadness
...but company culture might make you regret it

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Tests will continue until bugs no longer happen
Much complaining ensued (a common theme continuing
to present-day)

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Tests will continue until bugs no longer happen
— Tests got written
— I started getting more interested in the process
— Lost a political struggle to get the job I wanted so I
left

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Early 2006...
My gateway into OSS...
and tests...
and how to be a difﬁcult person...
and how to deal with difﬁcult people...
was via the CakePHP project

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Lesson Number Two
Tests for a project mean that at least somebody used to
care at some point about what they were doing

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— tests provide windows into bugs
— tests are still written by people
— people are willing to argue about everything and
anything

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Tests driven by bug ﬁxes help ﬁnd all
the weird decisions you made but don't
remember why

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They also show you how to actually use the code

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Think of them as stealth documentation

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But tests are written by people, and bad tests
happen.

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Critics like to use this as evidence that tests
don't work.

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They are wrong.

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I spent some years in the
wilderness

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I started to really learn about
testing

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Lesson Number 3
People struggle to learn about testing without help

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— TDD examples are way too simple
— People seek shortcuts to solutions
— Repeating theme - people want to argue about tools
and techniques

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TDD isn't simple because testing
isn't simple

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And your code isn't simple

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It's way more important to teach
people about tools and techniques

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Then they can apply them to their
own code

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So you might snort at yet-another-
FizzBuzz example

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But if you're not paying a!ention
to the PROCESS you will miss out

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Testing is something that cannot
be learned in isolation

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Testing IS code wri!en for a
SPECIFIC PURPOSE

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I am changing what I teach

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It's no longer enough to just show
people how to use the tools

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You have to show them where, and
when, and why to use them

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Desperately Seeking Shortcuts
— "I'd be ﬁnished with this task if I didn't have to write
the tests!!!"

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There are no shortcuts

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Just lots and lots of work to
try and create things with the
fewest bugs possible

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I started writing books and
giving lots of talks

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Lesson Number 4
All these testing problems and techniques were solved
back in the 1970's

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GO BUY THIS BOOK

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All the techniques we argue about
today were invented in the 1970's
and 1980's

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Programmer hubris led many to
think they were the ﬁrst to ﬁgure
it out

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Lesson Number 5
The problem is people

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Programming-related discussions
turn toxic very easily...

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...just like every other discussion
online

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Your best weapon against toxicity
is EMPATHY

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Testing your code requires you to
change how you write your code

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People do not like this

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People like to change WHAT THEY
USE but NOT HOW THEY USE IT

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Funny how the quest for the new
and shiny never seems to include
tools help them make things bug
free

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Shameless Plugs
My name is Chris Hartjes
— Staff Test Engineer at Mozilla (focussed on services)
— Twitter performance artist -> @grmpyprogrammer
— Buy my stuff at https://grumpy-learning.com

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Lessons Learned From 10 Years Of Testing

Lessons Learned From 10 Years Of Testing

Chris Hartjes

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