Hacker News with Generative AI: Unit Testing

Why Property Testing Finds Bugs Unit Testing Does Not (2021) (buttondown.com)
I intended this newsletter to be my thoughts without editing, and I have a new thought, so here goes. I want to respond to this discussion:

Software Testing, Unit Testing, Property Testing

57 points by Tomte 2 days ago | 89 comments

Semantic unit testing: test code without executing it (alexmolas.com)
Left Wallapop a couple of weeks ago, heading to RevenueCat soon. In that classic ‘between jobs’ hacking window, I built suite: a Python library for semantic unit testing. What’s semantic unit testing? Think unit tests that understand context and meaning, not just assert obj == expected. Sound interesting? I’ll break down what semantic unit testing is, how suite works under the hood, and how you can integrate it.

Python, Unit Testing, Software Testing, Software Development, Programming

75 points by alexmolas 21 days ago | 71 comments

Unit testing using mocks in Go (golangbot.com)
I generally prefer testing my code without using mocks. For example, if the code is integrated with Elastic Search, I prefer to run a elastic search container locally and test the Go code against that container. But there are some cases where creating a local environment for testing is not possible. This usually happens when integrating with cloud providers. Let’s take the case where the code is creating a AWS s3 bucket.

Go, Unit Testing, Mocks, Cloud Integration, AWS

7 points by spnvn 43 days ago | 0 comments

The Big TDD Misunderstanding (2022) (linkedrecords.com)
Rumors have it that the term “unit” in “unit test” originally referred to the test itself, not to a unit of the system under test. The idea was that the test could be executed as one unit and does not rely on other tests running upfront (see here and here). Another contradictive perspetive is this one: “The unit to be tested is the entire point of confusion and debate.

Software Development, Testing, Software Engineering, Unit Testing

63 points by WolfOliver 97 days ago | 84 comments

Unit Testing Principles (olano.dev)
This book can help you articulate why the techniques and best practices you’ve been using all along are so helpful. Don’t underestimate this skill. The ability to clearly communicate your ideas to colleagues is priceless. A software developer—even a great one—rarely gets full credit for a design decision if they can’t explain why, exactly, that decision was made.

Software Development, Unit Testing, Communication

22 points by facundo_olano 117 days ago | 6 comments

Diman: a Rust library for checking units of measure at compile time (github.com/Tehforsch)
Diman is a library for zero-cost compile time unit checking.

Rust, Programming Languages, Static Analysis, Unit Testing, Libraries

9 points by fanf2 118 days ago | 0 comments

Empirical Study of Test Generation with LLM's (arxiv.org)
Unit testing is an essential activity in software development for verifying the correctness of software components.

Software Development, Unit Testing, Artificial Intelligence, Research

40 points by nickpsecurity 146 days ago | 36 comments

Writing efficient unit tests in Java (qodo.ai)
Unit testing is like the essential vegetable on a developer’s plate—crucial for a healthy codebase, yet often pushed aside. However, robust Java applications consistently share one common trait: comprehensive test suites that catch bugs before they ever reach production.

Java, Unit Testing, Software Development

5 points by timbilt 182 days ago | 0 comments

Unit Testing Numerical Routines (buchanan.one)
As a prudent programmer, you probably do not consider your code finished until it has passed a rigorous set of unit tests. However, numerical routines such as this one present difficulties for unit testing. How can you be confident the function is correct in general? What if you don't know the expected output? What if the underlying algorithm changes?

Software, Programming, Unit Testing, Numerical Analysis

75 points by boscillator 192 days ago | 42 comments

Unit tests as documentation (thecoder.cafe)
Hello! Let’s continue our series on unit tests by discussing their relation with documentation.