Paul Hammant's Blog: A declaration against Unit Tests

[Ulrich Mayring to Leo Simmons today on dev@avalon.apache.org - both Avalon buddies]

> Unit tests are a reasonable alternative [ to documentation - Ed ]

I disagree. Unit tests are something very different from documentation.
IMHO unit tests are useless, because they only find trivial bugs, but
even if I'm wrong, they're not the same thing as docs.

This is not about XP per se, but more TDD. Well actually TDD is implicitly attacked here, as unit tests are explicitly mentioned.

Ulrich has declared in print that he thinks Unit tests are useless. I am not sure that I was ever so far against them, but I have certainly warmed in several digital moments of revelation over the last four years. I can't agree with any of Ulrich's current assertions.

I wonder over time will he too warm and repent. Or (and I'm so glad I wrote the two endianism postings before Ulrich posted this) will he hold his position, because he stated a position. Of course, Ulrich is a good guy and will probably move his opinion as he becomes exposed to TDD projects, or works with Joe ;-).

So there are people who declare and opinion and stick to it. There are others who can change their mind on something (and publicize it). Are there others more scheming that draw back from declaration, whilst holding an opinion as a way of avoiding the perception of u-turn later? We'll never know of course.