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Testing & Static Analysis

Fall 2024

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Announcements

  1. We will be starting on Project 1 in class on Thursday – due after the break.
  2. Mid-term exam next Thursday
  3. I forgot to post the readings, but they’re posted now. Please read the Testing and Static Analysis Chapters in the Google Book. We will discuss them on Thursday.

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Today’s Agenda

  1. Testing Overview
  2. Static Analysis Overview
  3. Activity 1: Testing & Static Analysis
  4. Activity 2: Software Design

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Today’s Agenda

  • Testing Overview
  • Static Analysis Overview
  • Activity 1: Testing & Static Analysis
  • Activity 2: Software Design

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Warmup: Benefits of Testing

What are some of the benefits of automated testing?

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Benefits of Automated Testing

What are some of the benefits of testing?

  • Less debugging
  • Increased confidence in changes – Why?
  • Improved documentation – Why?
  • Simpler reviews – Why?
  • Thoughtful design – Why?
  • Fast, high-quality releases – Why?

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Today’s Agenda

  • Testing Overview
  • Static Analysis Overview
  • Activity 1: Testing & Static Analysis
  • Activity 2: Software Design

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Static Analysis

  • What is a Compiler?
  • What languages are compiled?
  • Do JavaScript and Python have compilers?
  • What is an Interpreted Language?

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Static Analysis

  • What do we mean by "Static"?
  • Static-Analysis
    • Tools that examine and evaluate code without actually running it
  • Autoformatters
    • Focuses on formatting code automatically, enforcing style consistency (e.g., Black)
  • Linters
    • Focuses on analyzing code for possible errors, style violations, or inefficiencies, but typically leaves the code unchanged (e.g., Flake8)
  • Trade-offs

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Today’s Agenda

  • Testing Overview
  • Static Analysis Overview
  • Activity 1: Testing & Static Analysis
  • Activity 2: Software Design

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Demo Instructions

  • On GitHub, sync your fork
  • On your local machine:
    • Navigate to your csci338/class-exercises-fall2024 directory
    • Check that everything is already committed and pushed to your remote branch
    • Checkout main
    • Pull down the latest code (git pull)
  • Do the activity

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Today’s Agenda

  • Testing Overview
  • Static Analysis Overview
  • Activity 1: Testing & Static Analysis
  • Activity 2: Software Design

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Project 1: What the app should do

For your first project, you are going to create a command line tool to replicate aspects of the UNCA Course Search app. You and your team will implement the following features:

  • A way to download the UNCA data file from the Internet (JSON)
  • A way to display the search options.
  • A way to allow the user to specify which search options / filters they want
  • A way to store the user’s preferences (for any of the options)
  • A way to filter the courses according to the user’s preferences
  • A way to view, add and remove courses from a user’s schedule
  • A way to email their schedule to themselves

DEMO

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What are some things you need to think about?

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As a group, you need to organize your code so that everyone can make progress in parallel. What are some things you can do to make life easier?

  • Divide and conquer
  • Every person work on a different part
  • How to manage merges
  • Timeline

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Tips

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  • Single Responsibility Principle: A class should only have one job.
  • DRY Principle: Don’t repeat yourself.
  • Optimize for code readability rather than for performance: Why?

Make it correct,� make it clear,� make it concise,� make it fast.� In that order.

  • Delete unused code

https://vedantsopinions.medium.com/software-engineering-rules-of-thumb-63060ca51b94

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Tips

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  • Be deliberate with your naming – Name your classes, methods, class variables and even local variables very semantically.
  • Change one thing at a time – You don’t want a pull request that’s 1,000 lines long. Nightmare to review. Rather, make smaller PRs that have changes that are clear and easy to review / understand.
  • Write “dumb code” –
    • “Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.”
  • Beyoncé Rule – put a test on it; write testable code

https://vedantsopinions.medium.com/software-engineering-rules-of-thumb-63060ca51b94

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Activity: On Your Own (10 mins)

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  • Take out a piece of paper
  • Write down all of the classes you will need to create to build your course lookup app.
    • For each class, think about the properties and methods that will be needed.
    • Think about how you would make those classes testable.
  • Think about what could you do today to…
    • Make this project maintainable over time?
    • Minimize merge conflicts

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Activity: In Groups of 4 (10 mins)

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  • Discuss your designs with one another?
  • What was similar or different?

When you’re done, you’ll share out with the class.

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We will continue this activity on Thursday