Noel Rappin Writes Here

Nick Gauthier’s post about mock testing, got some attention and I was kind of opining about it on Twitter, but it’s well over 140 characters, so lucky you, I’ve decided to take it to the blog. (Do read Nick’s post, and then then comments, with Nick and Dave Chelimsky and others discussing the topic.) I want to back up a bit from the “Mock testing is bad for you and hurts puppies” versus the “Mock testing will make your breath fresh and cause you to lose weight” split argument.

This week I did Obtiva’s weekly Geekfest with a presentation/bookreport on the Making Software book. I’ll write more about that book later, right now I want to expand briefly on something I referenced at the end because it’s one of my favorite tech/UI examples to talk about. We were discussing the relationship between an experts gut feeling about what works and what can and can’t be shown using empirical evidence. Specifically, the difference, even for experts, between our perception of our effectiveness and our actual effectiveness.

In the interests of full disclosure, I probably should start by saying that, technically, Rails Test Prescriptions was not actually featured on this week’s MacBreak Weekly. But it is a lot more fun to say that it was… Here’s the whole sordid, somewhat self-indulgent story: I’ve been a regular listener to the MacBreak Weekly podcast almost since it started, and recently I’ve taken to listening to the show while walking to the train but switching to the video version when I get on the train.