"Lyle Johnson" <lyle / knology.net> wrote in message
news:ula8ff2batcv8c / corp.supernews.com...
> "MikkelFJ" <mikkelfj-anti-spam / bigfoot.com> wrote in message
> news:3d5457d0$0$43947$edfadb0f / dspool01.news.tele.dk...
>
> > I'm sorry, I could help it. I just find this considered harmful thing
> > completely overused.
>
> I suspect that Mikkel worded the opening line for his post this way
> intentionally, but an aside:

I actually I meant couldn't - but of course I could help it. The ironey of
considered harmful was intententional:
If UnitTesting is fanatic, so is the the Considered Harmful movement.
I'm not sure about this, but I believe the original Goto considered harmful
did indeed accept that Goto were useful in some places but not as the
primary means of control (as we have seen it in early Basic). This then got
elevated into all Goto is bad, much like the disciples of Socrates digressed
and made a point of counterarguing everything.

To the extreme there was recently a letter from Peter Coad about "Lists
Considered Harmful" stating the bleeding obvious that trees are better than
lists for indexing large data sets. (When do I get to be a Guru (tm) ;-) )

I do use Unit Testing myself  (actually I have written a much easier to use,
portable, downscaled C++ framework if anyone is interested). But again this
goes against these hugely bloated testing frameworks that will make you code
difficult to port and make it less future proof.

The real point is automated regression test - and I do believe the random
test generations is an important tool here. It also works well with design
by contract because the random testcases triggers the contract invariants.

> As many readers of comp.lang.ruby and ruby-talk will already know, Edsger
W.
> Dijkstra, author of the famous "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" letter
> (http://www.acm.org/classics/oct95), passed away on August 6. Here's a
link
> to one obituary (from the UTex CS department):

I was about to say that is very sad - but then that is the way we all go
eventually. Dijkstras shortest path algorithm is one of may favorite
algorithms. It is a very elegant way to efficiently solve a seemingly
difficult problem.

Mikkel