Comments on: What I Learned Programming With the Stars

By: dwhelan

dwhelan — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:47:02 +0000

Llewellyn, The use of Approval Tests is interesting. I will have to try it out! Also, using the Comparator with Arrays.Sort is a simple solution. Thanks for suggesting it! Declan

By: Twitted by dwhelan

Twitted by dwhelan — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 05:18:18 +0000

[...] This post was Twitted by dwhelan [...]

By: Llewellyn Falco

Llewellyn Falco — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:48:08 +0000

Here’s a 3 minute solution to closest to zero.
It doesn’t handle newkirk’s objection, except to ignore using an if statement.
And it’s a bit different than what most people do, but it’s what I would actually do, it’s fast, and gives me the important parts I want from test first, namely:
specification
feedback
regression
& granularity

I feel somewhat that people have forgotten that we use these practices to help us go faster.

public class ClosestToZeroTest extends TestCase {
public void testNumbersSort() throws Exception
Integer i[] = { 0, -1, 3, -4, 80, -80 };
sortAbsolute(i);
Approvals.approve(“”, i);
}

public void testNumberNearZero() throws Exception {
Integer i[] = { 2, -4, 80, -80 };
assertEquals(2, getLowestNumber(i));
}

private int getLowestNumber(Integer[] i) {
sortAbsolute(i);
return i[0];
}

private void sortAbsolute(Integer[] i) {
Arrays.sort(i, new CloseToZero());
}

public static class CloseToZero implements Comparator {
@Override
public int compare(Integer a1, Integer a2) {
return Math.abs(a1) – Math.abs(a2);
}
}

}

By: Patrick Wilson-Welsh

Patrick Wilson-Welsh — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 05:12:49 +0000

I agree with Declan’s summary on nearly all points. I don’t think our intentional programming idiom was in any way incorrect; we just ran out of time.

I think Newkirk’s objection was most useful and legitimate.

I agree with Newkirk that if every test method name ends up including the word should, then the word should ends up becomming noise. BDD semantic preferences and obvious superiority notwithstanding.

I had a blast with you too, Declan!

3.5 minutes is way short. Too short for us to swap keyboards, which would have earned us points back, I think…

–Patrick