Hush little baby, don't say a word, Daddy's going to teach you Microsoft Word.
And if that MS Word does not spell, then Daddy's going to teach you Microsoft Excel
And if that Excel doesn't save the day, then Daddy's going to teach you VBA
And if VBA doesn't hit the mark, then Daddy's going to teach you how to program C#.
The idea is that you can have the most powerful technology in the world, but if it's not focused in a profitable direction, your business (which pays for the technology) will never get to the right place.
You need both tech and business, else you plateau very quickly. Without business understanding, the technologists can build amazing things - that no one wants. That's fine for hobbyists and CS college students, but not sustainable for companies.
Without technical understanding, the business people can dream of profitable ideas - that no one can build.
You can unit test random methods by running the method in a loop and checking for statistical results.
For example, say you have a method to return a random integer between 1 and 10 (this could just as easily be to return any type between any range). You could run the test 100,000 times and confirm that the statistical distribution makes sense. With a sufficient sample size, there should be at least one of each value. The mathematically advanced could apply better statistics, like checking the proper distribution.
Here's a simple sample. It runs the random method in a loop, and checks just that each value was returned at least once.
public class MathHelper
{
private static Random _r = new Random();
public static int GetRandomInt()
{
//return Random int between 1 and 10
//recall that upper bound is exclusive, so we use 11
return _r.Next(1, 11);
}
}
[TestMethod]
public void Random_1()
{
int iMinRandomValue = 1;
int iMaxRandomValue = 10;
//Initialize results array
//ignore 0 value
int[] aint = new int[11];
for (int i = iMinRandomValue; i <= iMaxRandomValue; i++)
{
aint[i] = 0;
}
//Run method many times, record result
//Every time a number is returned, increment its counter
const int iMaxLoops = 1000;
for (int i = 0; i < iMaxLoops; i++)
{
int n = MathHelper.GetRandomInt();
aint[n] = aint[n] + 1;
}
//assert that each value, 1-10, was returned
for (int i = iMinRandomValue; i <= iMaxRandomValue; i++)
{
Assert.IsTrue(aint[i] > 0,
string.Format("Value {0} never returned.", i));
}
}
Of course, this assumes you're explicitly trying to test the random method - you could mock it out if the method is just a dependency and you're trying to test something else.
Two things that really got my attention:
Thanks Lance!
The book is divided into 34 small chapters, each based on insightful stories based on in-the-trenches experiences. Lots of people-books offer fluff: "be nice to all your coworkers", "work hard", "always brush your teeth so your bad breath doesn't alienate your coworkers", etc... Michael bypasses the obvious and gets to the good stuff. Some of the big points I took away:
Blunt Truths
Other misc quotes
