Interview Tip: Writing test cases

re: Interview Tip: Writing test cases

Peter Ritchie — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:27:19 GMT

Interesting. What spawned this? Did a recent candidate horribly bomb?

re: Interview Tip: Writing test cases

jmstall — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 01:45:53 GMT

I've seen it a few times :(

Interesting Finds: December 7, 2006

Jason Haley — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 05:01:54 GMT

re: Interview Tip: Writing test cases

Adel — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:15:20 GMT

Many thanks, hope you can write more in testing, or giving me some recommended resources.

thanks.

re: Interview Tip: Writing test cases

Ron — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:19:05 GMT

Rule #1 seems to be inadequate, according to Mr Myers' book, "the Art of Software Testing".

Mr Myers explains that the criterion of "execute every statement in the program at least once" is weak for a reasonable white-box test. (please, see pp. 44-45 of the aforementioned book for examples).

A stronger criterion is known as decision coverage or branch coverage. This criterion states that you must write enough test cases that each decision has a true and a false outcome at least once.

re: Interview Tip: Writing test cases

jmstall — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 09:36:55 GMT

Ron - I agree that the rules above are insufficient. I'm just laying out a quick minimum bar that you'd better at least hit in an interview. (kind of like, don't trip over your shoelaces)

Hitting every line is definitely not the same as fulling testing all code paths.