The esteemed Sebastian Bergmann, author of PhpUnit, makes a great comment in my earlier post on testing and ravioli code.

In the comment, he links to the Testivus Manifestivus from Alberto Savoia, which is about as non-dogmatic about testing as you can get, while still highlighting the importance of testing. You should read the whole thing, but here are some of the highlights.

Less testing dogma, more testing karma

Dogma can be informally described as authoritative principles, beliefs, often considered to be absolutely true. Testivus tries to keep testing dogma to a minimum. What works for some people sometimes, may not work for some other people, or even the same people at some other time.

Karma, on the other hand, can be informally explained as: "Do good things, and good things will happen to you." We believe that writing and running tests is a good thing so if you write and run tests good things will happen to you "¦ well perhaps just to your code.

We'd like to say that this is the central tenet of Testivus, but calling something a tenet would be too dogmatic.

Any tests are better than no tests

Self-explanatory and inspired by Martin Fowler, who once wrote "Imperfect tests, run frequently, are much better than perfect tests that are never written at all".

Savoia follows with "Testing beats debugging", "Test first, during, or after -- whatever works best for you", "If a method, technique, or tool, gives you more or better tests use it". While I may have issues with test-first and TDD, I am fully in support of Testivus.

What's intersting about Testivus is that it is the result of an earlier Savoia post about susceptibility to test-infection. That entry from Savoia is good too; he seems to approach things from a "how do people actually work" point of view, rather than "what would a perfect mode of working be". Strongly suggest you read it, if only to determine if you are a T1, T2, or T3 (I think of myself as in the T2 camp). TDD dogmatists (hi Noel Darlow!) take note: for whatever reason, some people are highly resistant to test-first, and airs of moral superiority and/or condescension do little to help your cause among the T2 and T3.

Update (2007-08-19): Alberto Savoia in the comments below notes that there are new extended versions of the Testivus Manifestivus.

Thanks for the new links.

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