Why Property Testing Finds Bugs Unit Testing Does Not (2021)

April 1, 2021 Why Property Testing Finds Bugs Unit Testing Does Not I intended this newsletter to be my thoughts without editing, and I have a new thought, so here goes. I want to respond to this discussion: But Kids These Days think randomly generating inputs (property-based testing) is cooler than finding the most telling inputs. (cf Hamlet&Taylor, "Partition testing does not inspire confidence", 1990, https://t.co/rNLugvGxob) — Brian Marick (@[email protected]) (@marick) March 27, 2021 (Standard disclaimer, don't brigade. It's a civil discussion and Brian is a friend, but even if both weren't the case, brigading is chillul Hashem) For those of you just joining us, Property-Based Testing is when, instead of giving specific input-outputs in your test, you describe the general properties the execution should have. Then you try it on randomized values. A simple example is testing that addition is commutative: def add (a, b): return a + b @given (integers(), integers()) def test_ ... Read full article.