[SciPy-User] peer review of scientific software

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 5:03 AM, Matt Newville
<newville at cars.uchicago.edu> wrote:

> Again, I'm not opposed to unit testing, or any other testing method at
> all, and find unit testing very useful (I was writing unit tests
> yesterday, in fact, and may write more today).  But it appears to me
> that some people are under the impression that a) if code has unit
> tests it is bug free, and b) if code does not have unit tests, it is
> full of bugs.  Both are wrong.

I don't suppose anyone thinks that exactly.  If they've been writing
and using software for a while they probably think that code with unit
tests is more likely to be reliable than code without, and that code
without unit tests should be treated with great caution.

I think it would be very hard to argue that the need for unit tests
had been overplayed.   I haven't seen anyone test code too much, and I
have often seen people (myself included) test code too little.

Best,

Matthew