Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
> 
>> Yep. Every time you use "assert" to check your inputs, you're doing 
>> that. Except with minimal language assistance.
> 
> Eiffel has preconditions *and* postconditions, which most people don't 
> seem to bother checking with assert() calls.

Yes. The postconditions are checked with unit tests. And people try to check 
invariants that way too. And unit tests generally don't try to check loop 
invariants.

> QuickCheck does automated randomised testing. Give QC a property that's 
> supposed to hold for any inputs, and it generates inputs at random and 
> checks whether the property holds.

Again, you're checking invariants, which I find is usually not that useful.

> I thought the idea was that you then combine several units into a larger 
> unit, and test that (and so on, recursively). Then again, maybe that's 
> what they mean by "integration testing"...

Yes, that's integration testing.  Then there's "functional testing", where 
you test the program does what the customer actually wants. Then there's 
system testing, where you make sure the program does what the customer 
actually wants even when interacting with other code (basically).

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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