A report from the Google Test Automation Conference

Posted May 4, 2013 0:19 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
Parent article: A report from the Google Test Automation Conference

Facebook has no test or QA departments. The developers are responsible for testing.

If they actually mean the same individual who designs and writes code test it, I would word that differently: Facebook doesn't test its code.

I don't consider the running of code that the coder does testing. It's just part of an iterative trial-and-error development process. To be worthy of being called "testing" I expect the work to be done by someone whose judgment isn't clouded by his expectation that the code works or fear that it doesn't. Or the fact that time spent testing takes away from time that could be spent doing something more fun like designing and coding.

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Testing at Facebook

Posted May 4, 2013 11:48 UTC (Sat) by drothlis (guest, #89727) [Link] (3 responses)

> I don't consider the running of code that the coder does testing.

If you mean a developer running a program as he or she is developing it,
then I agree with you completely. Simon's talk was about *automated*
testing.

> time spent testing takes away from time that could be spent doing
> something more fun like designing and coding.

I imagine that Facebook looks for developers that don't think testing is
beneath them. Automated testing has its own engineering challenges that
are just as fun to design & code, as production software has. :-)

Testing at Facebook

Posted May 4, 2013 12:07 UTC (Sat) by drothlis (guest, #89727) [Link]

BTW Simon talks about this at 26:42 [video] if you want some additional context.

He does mention a form of manual testing: Facebook employees run beta versions of their apps on their own phones (36:03 [video]). I think Facebook's product is particularly well suited to this, and it doesn't apply to all software projects -- you obviously can't dogfood your banking backend or aircraft control system at home.

Testing at Facebook

Posted May 4, 2013 18:26 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

Simon's talk was about *automated* testing.

And in that context, I assumed the testing he was talking about was developing the test cases for the automated test machinery to run. And that's something I would want done by someone other than the author of the code to consider it a real test.

I imagine that Facebook looks for developers that don't think testing is beneath them.

They would also have to look for developers who enjoy testing as much as designing and coding.

Of course, they might let some talented, affordable designers and coders go to competitors in so doing.

Testing at Facebook

Posted May 7, 2013 17:15 UTC (Tue) by drothlis (guest, #89727) [Link]

> developing the test cases [... is] something I would want done by
> someone other than the author of the code to consider it a real test.

That's a very important point. Some possible solutions (or at least
mitigations):

+ Code review: Tests should be given just as much, or more, scrutiny
during code reviews as the code-under-test itself.

+ Pair programming: Pair up on a given feature, with one developer
writing the tests and the other developer writing the implementation;
swap roles for the next feature/iteration/sprint.

+ Integration tests: End-to-end integration tests will, by their nature,
cover more than a single developer's work, so the developer writing
the test is, by definition, not testing only his or her own code.
The same is true for isolated component tests, depending on the size
of the component.