Comments on: They’re Called Microtests

By: David Carlton

David Carlton — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:23:27 +0000

Thanks, looks good!

By: GeePawHill

GeePawHill — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:25:26 +0000

Thx! Fixed it. (I *do* wish I could keep comments on the same page as the article. sigh.)

By: Unit testing done right – Better then sliced bread « Perpetual Pursuit of Perfection

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:44:50 +0000

[...] Write tests before writing the code. It helps to be more clear about the requirements and help to focus the programming efforts. In software development typing is never the bottleneck. Thinking is. Tests make development faster because they help to focus: “How TDD and Pairing Increase Production” and “They’re Called Microtests” [...]

By: jim

jim — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:37:31 +0000

Isn’t this term already in use?

By: Darren Rowley

Darren Rowley — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:43:19 +0000

I like this, I always used to say – just because it extends JUnit doesn’t mean its a unit test.

By: Situated Geekery » Blog Archive » The Double Dawg Dare

Situated Geekery » Blog Archive » The Double Dawg Dare — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:59:44 +0000

[...] Because that’s what I want. I will wrestle with it, in public, until I have brought it under microtest. [...]

By: Stephan

Stephan — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:55:57 +0000

As far as I am concerned an example demonstrates that (or how) something does work.
In contrast, a test is meant to show that something doesn’t work (as expected) – in the first place. Of course having a large set of passing tests gives some confidence of working software.
(I don’t think the two are opposites of each other, but they’re certainly not the same either.)

By: Dave Nicolette

Dave Nicolette — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:35:32 +0000

Why not just call them “examples?”

By: GeePawHill

GeePawHill — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:58:08 +0000

Gavin, what you’ve described seems very much a microtest. (I may roll a few examples in the code project i’m getting ready to offer here.) — Hill

By: Gavin

Gavin — Thu, 28 May 2009 02:36:54 +0000

Will an example of the differences be possible?
Would this be considered a microtest?

Say I create a “Microtest” where I instantiate a message handler. The message handler reads the message, obviously, and finds all expired library books and flags them as expired.

All database and external dependencies are mocked or faked out.
Is this considered a Microtest or Unit test or is this example to vague. The test checks that an expired book is flagged as ‘Expired’.

P.S. Sorry to use the old Library example.