Gauges

The "test" word in TDD is problematical. People are (rightly) uncomfortable with using it to describe the executable design documents that get written in TDD. The idea of testing has become too tightly bound to the practice of building a system and then shaking it really hard to see what defects fall out. There is an older sense of test, meaning "to prove", which would help but isn't current enough. Fundamentally, though, these artefacts are called tests for historical reasons (ie, intellectual laziness). One attempt to fix this vocabulary problem has the twin defects of going too far in the direction of propaganda, and not far enough in the actual changes it proposes.

In any case, I'm more interested in finding explanatory metaphors to help people use the tools that are currently widely available and supported than I am in...doing whatever it is to people's heads that the BDD crowd think they are doing. Anyway, I've found that it's a bit helpful to talk about test-first tests being gauges (as I've mentioned in passing before. Trouble is that too few people these days have done any metalwork.

A Metaphor Too Far

So, the important thing about a plug gauge or such is that it isn't, in the usual sense, a measuring tool. It gives a binary result, the work piece is correctly sized to within a certain tolerance or it isn't. This makes, for example, turning a bushing to a certain outside diameter a much quicker operation than it would be if the machinist had to get out the vernier micrometer and actually measure the diameter after each episode of turning and compare that with the dimensioned drawing that specifies the part. Instead, they get (or assemble, or make) a gauge that will tell whether or not a test article conforms to the drawing, and use that.

And this is exactly what we do with tests: rather than compare the software we build against the requirement after each development episode, we build a test that will tell us if the requirement is being conformed to. But so few people these days have spent much time in front of a lathe that this doesn't really fly.

But, flying home from a client visit today my eye was caught by one of those cage-like affairs into which you dunk your cabin baggage (or not). It would be far too slow for the check-in staff to get out a tape measure, measure your bag, and compare the measurements with the permitted limits. So instead, they have a gauge. From now on (until I find a better one), that's my explanatory metaphor. Hope it works.