#50: Property-based testing: find bugs automatically by generating thousands of test cases

Around IT in 256 seconds

Property-based testing is an approach to automatically test software against well-defined rules. We don’t specify desired output for a few inputs. Instead, we barely define properties that should always hold. It’s best explained with an example. How do you make sure that your compression algorithm works? Ordinary unit tests verify a handful of inputs that you came up with. If you are experienced developer, you will include edge cases. I mean, the weirdest inputs, like an empty string or a long sequence of the same character. And what are the properties of a good compression algorithm? Its output should takes less space, obviously. But even more importantly, lossless algorithm should be capable of decompression. What if I told you, there is software that can check these properties automatically? With thousands of randomized tests?

Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/50

Get the new episode straight to your mailbox: https://nurkiewicz.com/newsletter