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Unit tests as documentation

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94 points thunderbong | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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lucianbr ◴[] No.41872163[source]
One - unit tests explain nothing. They show what the output should be for a given input, but not why, or how you get there. I'm surprised by the nonchalant claim that "unit tests explain code". Am I missing something about the meaning of the english word "explain"?

Two - so any input value outside of those in unit tests is undocumented / unspecified behavior? A documentation can contain an explanation in words, like what relation should hold between the inputs and outputs in all cases. Unit tests by their nature can only enumerate a finite number of cases.

This seems like such an obviously not great idea...

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1. Etherlord87 ◴[] No.41873888[source]
Documentation:

> returns a sum of reciprocals of inputs

Unit Test:

    assert_eq(foo(2, 5), 1/2 + 1/5)
    assert_eq(foo(4, 7), 1/4 + 1/7)
    assert_eq(foo(10, 100, 10000), 0.1101)