[squeak-dev] Improved MVCToolBuilderTests in source.squeak.org/tests

Ian Trudel ian.trudel at gmail.com
Sat Jul 11 22:26:47 UTC 2009


People hi,

It's great to see that Bernhard has taken the initiative. In my mind,
writing tests in spare time is exactly that. A little thing here, a
little thing there, then next thing you know everything is properly
tested.

I have also decided to conduct a small experiment with one of my
programmer. He has absolutely no prior experience with Squeak or
Smalltalk. His background is Delphi (personal projects) and Ruby with
NetBeans (professionally).

The experiment is relatively straightforward. He has to write few
tests every week but without much of instructions. We keep a small
diary to be able to provide data on to the community later. I have
however gave him a presentation how to sync with the Squeak community
trunk and tests. Then, we have connected on his computer for the first
tests he would write, and I have supervised. That's about as much
instructions as he will get.

The first presentation lasted 80 minutes and it also took 80 minutes
to write and commit tests for SmallInteger#odd and SmallInteger#even.
Both few days apart.

One of the most obvious observation is the confusion when he has to
perform specific actions, which is likely to be a button or in a menu.
Even with the buttons in his face, he would search in EVERY menu
Squeak could have. Just like our favourite headless chicken. What it
indicates me is the lack of clarity in the menus, it's disorganized
and counter intuitive. It came to one point that I HAD TO TELL HIM
where to find what he needed. Confusion (as in completely lost) is
what described our 80 minutes remote desktop session, when he was the
one in command.

He has commited code under the initials p4s. You can comment here and
I'll pass on him. Hopefully, a small contribution every week but small
is beautiful.

Ian.
-- 
http://mecenia.blogspot.com/



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