connect four (game)

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Nov 27, 2017 at 3:04 PM, Rustom Mody <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Aviators have pinned down the best solution to this, I think. A pilot
>> is not expected to be perfect; he is expected to follow checklists. A
>> preflight checklist. A departure checklist. A landing checklist.
>> Everything that needs to be done right is mentioned on the list, and
>> you just go through the list and make sure you've done everything.
>
> And thats where the analogy breaks down.
> Presumably a 50 person short-flight and a 600-person transcontinental may have
> at least something in common in their pilot-checklists
> What common will you find in a multi-million line OS, a thousand line script
> and a student prime-numbers first-program?

You locate a pure function. I can pretty much guarantee that the first
two will have a number of them, and the third one may or may not, but
almost certainly should. Pure functions are the easiest to unit-test.
Then you build up from there.

> No I am not dissing on testing and TDD; just that universality¹ of computing devices
> is something that our civilization is nowhere near understanding, leave alone
> dealing with — two programs can be more far apart than a bullock cart and a jet.
> And yet they are both programs

... so?

> ¹ Ive seen CS PhDs ask a student why a student didnt incorporate some error-checking
>   into his compiler which amounted to solving the halting problem.
>   More mundanely I see students have a hard time seeing their phones and their
>   laptops as 'the same'

Again: so? Testing methodologies don't require that.

ChrisA