This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: On testing Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

"You should test things that might break. If code is so simple that it can't possibly break, and you measure that the code in question doesn't actually break in practise, then you shouldn't write a test for it. If I told you to test absolutely everything, pretty soon you would realize that most of the tests you were writing were valueless, and, if you were at all like me, you would stop writing them."

He brings this up as part of this discussion from last week on testing. I'm not sure that this makes the point Ryan wants it to make; seems to me it's just a bit of pragmatism. People, (being people), are not going to engage in activity they see as value free (see any of the heavily paper driven methodologies, for instance). It all depends on how you interpret "code that is so simple that it can't possibly break". Unfortunately, lots of people are going to classify things that way that they shouldn't (for the same reason that so much code out there doesn't check to see if a file i/o operation worked). If this is what Ryan meant, then sure, it's a call for caution - but it's also a call to apply common sense