PHP Has No Culture of Testing

sebastian-bergmann.de

2 pointsnreece3 comments

Why does a language have to have a culture of testing? If you are a good engineer, you will find a way to test your code, even if it means really going out of your way to test your code. For example, there really isn't an easy way to test kernel code written in C, so some people embed a Tcl interpreter in their C code, write some tcl command handlers, and use the tcltest package to test.

Just because your cute little framework created some test file placeholders for you doesn't mean you're going to write good code, or good tests.

Having a good culture is important for various things, in my opinion. It doesn't guarantee code is good, of course, but by creating expectations that things should be done a certain way, I think that on average, it does make a language more attractive.

Case in point: Tcl and Tk made it vastly easier to create GUI's, but there was little to no culture of getting design right, no guidance about how to make a good UI, and that came back to bite Tk because people came to associate it with ugly GUIs.

great article, but php bashing is akin to a class war, and yea sure - the upper classes are more secure (trustworthy) than the lowers ha?

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