Appendix B. Essays on testing
The following is a short collection of essays on testing, ones to which the recipes refer in order to cover some essential ground. Because this is a book about recipes, we wanted to limit the amount of free-range prose. Still, there are a few concepts that are not effectively written as recipes but are nonetheless fundamental to understanding some of our reasoning in the recipes. To keep the spirit of recipes, each essay is divided into two parts: The point and The details.
As you might hope, we give you the point first, rather than waiting until the end of the essay. Once you have read the point, you can decide whether to keep reading. If we have piqued your interest, great; but if not, come back to it later. You choose.
Also, as these are essays, they include some opinions. We may sometimes fall into the trap of proclaiming our opinion as truth, and if we do that, do not believe it. Take it as literary license, gather some experience, make some observations, and then judge for yourself. If we turn out to be wrong we will not mind your saying so, although food and drink might soften the blow.
Enjoy.
Some code is too simple to break. We think you should concentrate your effort on testing code that might break, rather than testing code that clearly cannot. The trick, of course, is to decide how simple is “too simple.”