From: Jean-Hugues ROBERT Date: 2004-06-13T16:13:15+09:00 Subject: Re: [ANN] celsoft.com/Battery 0.1.1 At 08:12 13/06/2004 +0900, you wrote: >On Saturday 12 June 2004 13:34, David A. Black wrote: >> > arbitrary: >> > Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or >> > principle. >> > >> > There is no fundamental reason tests should be ordered alphabetically. >> >> Maybe, maybe not -- but in either case, I was addressing your original >> claim, which was not that choosing alphabetical order over other designs >> was arbitrary, but rather that in Nathaniel's design, the tests were >> run in arbitrary (i.e., determined by chance, whim, etc.) order. They >> aren't, so I wanted to let you and other readers know. >> >> This had (and has) nothing to do with the processing of choosing >> alphabetical order (which you introduced into the discussion later), >> but rather with the fact that alphabetical order is not, itself, >> arbitrary -- and, concommitantly, with the fact that Nathaniel didn't >> deserve to have his design misrepresented as involving something it >> doesn't. > >When you're given no choice, as far as you're concerned as a library user, >they're run in an arbitrary order. The fact that it turns out they are run >alphabetically doesn't change the fact that the system of ordering is >arbitrary. There is no rhyme, reason or principal determining the order; it >was decided by the author at his prerogative. If the tests were run >according to the length of the method names, that would still be an arbitrary >order. As far as I'm concerned, the order that tests are run is a black box. > > Sean O'Dell Hi Sean, I suspect that there is some misunderstanding here. That you would call the order "arbitrary" conveys some negative connotation that you certainly want to avoid not to appear rude or condescending. In France a typical "arbitrary" decision was King's one to put you on jail (lettre de cachet). As a result "arbitrary" tends to mean "lack of respect". I also suspect that the decision to "order" tests is not at all arbitrary compared to the decision not to sort tests. I tend to think that it is a good thing to order things and alphabetic order is a reasonable choice that is easy to understand by everybody. Once things are ordered, you can take advantage of that and for example name your test AAA until they first work. That way you get early results. Once your test passes, you then rename it in a more understandable way. That's just a trick, but it helps, and would not be possible if there was no documented order. For sure, it is always a good thing to give rationals and if the "ordering" was not documented properly then that could be improved. Something that seems arbitrary at first look may turn out to be solid once understood. This requires both some help from the author and some good will of the reader. Yours, JeanHuguesRobert ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Web: http://hdl.handle.net/1030.37/1.1 Phone: +33 (0) 4 92 27 74 17