Hi,

On Jul 10, 2013, at 3:01 PM, Camillo Bruni <[email protected]> wrote:

> 
> On 2013-07-10, at 14:47, Tudor Girba <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> On Jul 10, 2013, at 1:47 PM, Camillo Bruni <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 2013-07-10, at 13:32, Tudor Girba <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> Precisely. There is a huge difference between invalidating a known 
>>>> contract (i.e., failure) and raising an unexpected error (i.e., error).
>>> 
>>> In which sense?
>> 
>> In the sense that they express two distinct classes of problems.
>> 
>>> As a programmer I have to tackle them both the same way: start debugging.
>> 
>> Yes, but not all debugging is created equal :)
>> 
>>> I really do not see the difference. In both cases the code does not behave 
>>> as expected.
>>> One might even say that there is a global contract that the code does not 
>>> raise exceptions.
>> 
>> Yes, but then what is the point of explicit assertions? :)
>> 
>>> Tackling the failures first is purely a habit induced by the existing 
>>> system that errors are worse than failures
>> 
>> Actually, it is the other way around :). Errors are much faster to fix than 
>> failures. Errors are often caused by bad initializations and you can see it 
>> rather fast when you see the exceptions. On the other hand, failures are 
>> often more sensitive to the deep semantics of your code and that is why they 
>> require more time to get fixed.
> 
> That is fun, because everybody first takes the yellow ones because they come 
> on top...

Really? I think people pick and choose (or at least try to) before fixing a 
test. So, any hints that help people with this choice is a good thing. This is 
why the premise of Phexample could bring so much value because besides the 
fluent interface, it builds a tree of tests.

> So in the end the results should just be grouped by type of error I think.

That is actually a rather cool idea. I would be happy to join playing with such 
an idea.

Cheers,
Doru

--
www.tudorgirba.com

"Yesterday is a fact.
 Tomorrow is a possibility.
 Today is a challenge."




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