[LRUG] TDD (was: Ruby Contracting)

[Tom Stuart]

On 19 Feb 2009, at 10:51, Francisco Trindade (Frank) wrote:
> Tests are code, and are so difficult to write or maintain as  
> development code.

This is a seductive and commonly repeated idea but is demonstrably  
untrue for things like Rails applications, particularly in the sense  
that frameworks like Rails are targeted squarely at the "application  
writer" and not the "test writer" -- one could make a fairly  
persuasive argument that Rails is an incomplete framework until  
writing and maintaining tests for a Rails app really is the same  
difficulty as writing and maintaing the Rails app itself. We're not  
there yet.

I know we're not talking about Rails (or any other framework) here,  
but it's definitely true that writing tests that interact with other  
people's code is harder than writing your own code, and no sizable  
Ruby application is an island.

Cheers,
-Tom