From: "William E. Rubin" <williamerubin@...>
Date: 2005-12-09T04:03:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Syntax checker?

>That last one is particularly good if you learn by seeing things in
>action rather than reading about the technique.

("That last one" being the "Craftsman").

All interesting, and looks useful.  The Craftsman one, though, struck
me as absurd.  What I got out of that article was this:

(1) The programmer tasked with factoring numbers did not know how to
factor numbers.  He did not realize this until he saw his code fail a
particular test case.

(2) He claims that he would have never been able to figure out how to
factor numbers without having seen that test case fail.

(3) Rather than go back and learn how to factor numbers,  as he should
have, he instead progressively modifies his code to pass more and more
test cases.

(4) He then goes on to happily assume that his final code is good,
because it passed several test cases.

That's a recipe for danger, right there.