Class 12: Testing Your Procedures

Held: Friday, 10 February 2017

We consider testing: When, why, and how you might test the proceduresand programs that you write.

Preliminaries

Overview

• Why test?
• Strategies for testing
• RackUnit’s primary testing operations

Related Pages

• Eboard 12 (Source)

• Reading: Testing Your Procedures with RackUnit

• Lab: Unit Testing with RackUnit

Updates

News / Etc.

• Continue partners! You know the drill.
• I distributed grades yesterday (although with the wrong class listed).
• Only HW1 has been graded. A “check” (the default grade) is worth about 85 points. I think that’s stated somewhere in my policies. (If about 1/4 of your grades are “plus”, you usually have a HW score in the A range.)
• You have all earned five points of extra credit on the exam for corrections. Congratulations! Of course, Titus may never let me write exam problems again. I still appreciate additional corrections, but they will not garner you extra points.
• I think I’ve responded to every prologue I’ve received (as of 10pm Thursday night). If you filled out the prologue before then, and haven’t heard from me, let me know.
• Many of you wrote “Stop when I get stuck for more than a few minutes” in response to “What should you do to be successful”. Note that at that point, you should send me an email message explaining what you are stuck on.
• I was glad to see so many of you (or what seemed to be so many of you) at yesterday’s depressing convocation.

Reminders

• Ask questions via email! I’m always happy to (try to) answer questions via email. There is no need to apologize when sending me questions. If I take too long to answer, send another email (or even text, if it’s a reasonable hour).
• Visit me in my office! I’m always happy to see students during my office hours. I prefer that you book me at https://rebelsky.youcanbook.me, but you can also just show up during office hours and hope that I’m not busy.
• Use our tutors! We have tutors available Sunday through Thursday evening from 7-10 p.m. in Science 3813/15.
• Visit mentor sessions! We have mentor sessions on Wednesday and Thursday evenings from 8:00-9:00 p.m. in the CS Commons. Wednesdays will be more Q&A, Thursdays will include sample quizzes.
• Visit review sessions! I run review sessions on Thursdays at 9am in this room.
• We have individual tutors!
  We have individual tutors available for those who take advantage of the above and find that it’s not enough.
• Visit our store! We have office supplies in the commons. Price is free will donation.
• Get news! Feel free to ask me to sign you up for the department mailing list.
• NEW: Suggest extra credit! Send me extra credit ideas and opportunities.

Upcoming Work

• Review: Testing your procedures.
• Lab writeup: Problem ???. Due Monday before class.

Extra credit (Academic/Artistic)

• CS Table, Next Tuesday at noon, 14 Feb 2017. Topic forthcoming.
• Thursday extras, Thursday, 16 Feb 2017, 4:15 p.m., Science 3821: 4-1 joint BA/MSC program with UIowa.

Extra credit (Peer)

• South-Asian Chai time on Friday, at 4pm, in JRC 2nd floor. Be moderate in all that you do.
• Reflect on how awesome the sound and lights are for Milo the Rapper and Crunchy Kids 9 p.m., Friday, Gardner.
  Be moderate in all that you do.
• Pun Club Saturday at 4pm in the Secret Younker 1st Floor Lounge Location. (You only get credit for this once.)
• Friday-Saturday-Sunday, 17th-19th, Swimming and diving conference championships. (You can only get credit for this twice.)
• Saturday the 18th, Symphony Concert. 2-4 p.m. Sound painting and more! In Sebring-Lewis.

Good things to do

• Track meet this Saturday.
• Large group speech showcase, Saturday at 6:30 p.m., Grinnell High School.
• Women’s basketball this Saturday at 1pm.
• Men’s basketball this Saturday at 3pm.

Friday PSA

Most of my thoughts on testing have ended up in the reading.

Basic Idea

• We verify the correctness of procedures by running tests that compare predicated values to actual values.

Model

• We do a single comparison with check-equal? (or some variants).
• We group one or more comparisons into a test case with test-case. That lets us add a description to the checks.
• We group one or more tests or comparisons into a test suite with test-suite. Unlike test-case, which runs the test,, test-suite builds a value that you run later.