Re: case against XP

[Jakub Travnik <address@hidden>]

From: Sundar Narasimhan <sundar@ascent.com>
Subject: Re: case against XP (was: PG: Hackers and Painters)
Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 09:00:20 -0400

> Jerry -- I'm confused. How do you write unit tests say for the
> Travelling Salesman Problem :) And even if you did write a couple of
> test instances, how does it help you write the code to solve the
> problem? (I've seen plenty such codes that handled test suites fine,
> but crashed horribly or performed poorly when faced w/ real production
> problems).

Unit tests can test sub-problems very well. TSP solver surely will be
composed of some sub parts, you can test them. If you don't you will
have less certainty where the problem might be when it strikes.

Testing whole problem solver is useful too. You know when you break it
by some modification (i.e. adding optimization).


Jakub Travnik
jabber://jtra@jabber.com