Manual Test is Unsustainable

Creating automated tests can be very difficult, especially when the code has gotten long in the tooth and was not created with automated tests to begin with. Many product development teams don’t invest in automated tests. They think they cannot afford them. They think their product is different and can’t be tested automatically. This thinking is flawed.

Back in the products younger days, manual test was not too time consuming. But slowly that changed. The system grows, the manual test effort grows. Eventually, it seems that no amount of manual test effort finds all the problems.

In this article I show a simple model that illustrates why manual test is unsustainable and that a sustainable software product development effort must include considerable test automation.

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Wishing for a Command Line Interface

I have a few courses that share materials and ideas. I used to use the age-old practice of cut and paste to share the slides. As handy as it is, cut and paste causes trouble. If I’m teaching TDD in C and make a change to a discussion that applies also to C++ or or some other language, I’ve got a problem. I’ll never remember to put the change in the other places where the change is needed. This means that later I find myself in front of a group of C++ programmers about to make a big point, and find that the dramatic conclusion added to the C version I made is not in the current slide deck.

As with code, duplication in presentations is a liability. So I needed to refactor my training materials, and need a practical way to deliver them and provide a PDF handout of the presentation.
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