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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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Facts versus Reputation 5 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • Hey, never let facts get in the way of a little hyperbole. ;)

    Perl has had a canonical test suite in the core repository and shipped those tests with every source distribution since 1987. As of at least Ruby 1.8.7 (May 2008), this was not true of Ruby.

    I wouldn't equate a core development team with that language's community. The Perl core team certainly was and is fanatical about testing, but the community? I think they caught up much later. In the case of Ruby we have the opposite situation - the community

    • The Perl core team certainly was and is fanatical about testing, but the community? I think they caught up much later.

      In 2000, CPAN authors had the expectation to write tests. The CPAN client ran those tests when installing modules.

      It's 2009. Does Ruby gems run tests yet?

      Adding features is usually a simple matter of subclassing (with Test::Unit anyway - I don't use RSpec).

      You don't even have to do this with Perl. Someone writes a new test module, once, uploads it to the CPAN, and then everyone can use it without subclassing or trying to get multiple subclasses to work together nicely.

      I haven't used RSpec, but the last time I tried to do anything useful with Test::Unit (2006), I very nearly ported Perl's Test::Builder and Test::More to Ruby so I wouldn't have to feel like a caveman trying to build a skyscraper out of bear skins and flint knives.

      You'll have to be more specific about what you think we're missing.

      A sense of proportion, a sober understanding of the rest of the world of programming, and a solid grasp of history would do nicely.

      • In 2000, CPAN authors had the expectation to write tests. The CPAN client ran those tests when installing modules.

        Yeah, but I don't know when a real jump was made from running that stock one-test default test file that h2xs generated to people being really good about writing tests. That's hard to know for sure, but I would put it somewhere around 2002. But still, yeah, pretty good.

        You don't even have to do this with Perl. Someone writes a new test module, once, uploads it to the CPAN, and then everyone

        • That's hard to know for sure, but I would put it somewhere around 2002.

          It started in late 2001, but you're probably right that it only became popular and inevitable in 2002. I spent a lot of time in late 2001 avoiding finishing a book and writing tests for the Perl 5 core instead.

          I think the decision to not run them by default is, in part, because of the weakness of Test::Unit 1.x.

          That's what I don't get about the "Rah rah, TDD whee!" cheerleading from some parts of the Ruby community. You might as we

          • That's what I don't get about the "Rah rah, TDD whee!" cheerleading from some parts of the Ruby community. You might as well not write tests if you're not going to run them.

            Yeah, that makes no sense to me either.

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