I like that you've been thinking about thinking while writing your framework, Isaac. I dig that. :-)
The way I'm currently tackling the tests, is to try to work them into my routine. That hard part is, as been mentioned, not having to go back a lot to keep it all in sync. I wonder if this ties into keeping branches synced up with trunk and whatnot with SVN... heh. Somehow similar... Anyways, where I'd, before, just keep doing stuff in a scribble file, sorta testing, building, testing (but not saving any tests), I now try to save the tests, sorta. It is hard to write tests that are easy to refactor, but it's getting easier as time goes by. There are sweeping changes sometimes, and I'm a sweeping changer, for all my not much changing... but it really does save time having those old tests, of the various bits. If just in having that history/memory refresher... I'm still working on the testing of the behaviors, I guess, because I'm quite often including stuff in later tests that are tested themselves, but should be stubs (instead of the real things), just to verify the behavior, but that's still sorta beyond me. Basically I can see cascading fails, where I don't think you'd have that with stubs and whatnot. It still works, but I could see how it would work better to keep it strictly to interactions, vs. creating and whatnot. If that makes sense. Probably didn't explain it too clear since I'm still twirling the ideas around in my head, sorta. I get the failure aspect of overthinking, or overengineering, and I battle those twin demons (or maybe it's just one demon with two heads), and other, more Rube Goldberg-ish impulses, but I have actually seen some pretty good return on tests, even with poor style, as it were. What sells me, is projects like the javascript toolkit "dojo". That thing is verbose, but put together really well. It's a snap to read the sources, and there are some good standards, and *various* types of tests, from your more literal "it passed!" to your, "here a few random examples". I've had really good luck refactoring and keeping up-to date with it, and I attribute the majority there to well written code. It has been really interesting to watch it evolve. Same with projects like Eclipse and whatnot. Apache, hell, it's been ages. I think that part of the reason open source is kicking ass, is because it's really tackled the problems of the future, you know? There's a lot of history, too, that we can learn from, all the various flavors of OSes.. Mozilla... from sources open to closed to a mix of the two... but, heh, the battle of big balls of mud... Maybe it's fundamental. Part of nature. Something about entropy or whatnot, ya know? Chaos and order, a spinning yin-yang of seasons. :] Balance. I'm trying to hold it, but it still sorta feels like jumping from one side to the other, versus just sorta maintaining. Not exactly smooth... but not too rough. Hmmm... maybe it will be easier if I go faster! HaHA! -- There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands of others. George Matthew Adams ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;203748912;27390454;j Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:311897 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
