Re: [Pyunit-interest] comments on PyUnit

[Guido v. R. <gu...@di...>]

> >The problem is that many test suites (e.g. the Zope tests for
> >PageTemplates :-) use assert statements instead of calls to fail*() /
> >assert*() methods.
> 
> So in the future do I have to switch from:
>          assert sess.hasFragments(self.userPages())
> 
> to:
>          if sess.hasFragments(self.userPages()):
>                  self.fail()
> ?
> 
> Here's a proposal that I know will get shot down.  :-)

No, you would write

        self.verifyTrue(sess.hasFragments(self.userPages()))

> How about a "test" statement?
> 
>          test sess.hasFragments(self.userPages())
> 
> 
> - Works like assert
> - Raises a TestError
> - No flags to turn it off
> 
> One "soft" advantage is that it makes the concept of regression testing 
> much more prominent. People will ask, "What is this 'test' statement I see 
> in the language?" Then they will get a big lecture on unit testing.

Sorry, I don't see any reason why we should change the language for
this, despite your pitch. :-)

> (Aside: Glad to hear that optimizations and assertions will be separated in 
> the future. Thanks. My favorite feature of Python over Objective-C is that 
> Python gets better over time. (Objective-C stagnated.))

It's a dead language.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)