# wewut Published articles for wewut. This is one page of public article previews, not the complete archive. Follow Next page to continue. Summaries are not the original full articles. ## Maintainability and Expect Literals DevFeed: [Maintainability and Expect Literals]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Jay (noreply@blogger.com) Published: 2016-06-16T11:21:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Jay Fields]() Topics: [Maintainability](), [unit test](), [test](), [Code](), [function](), [formatting]() Tags: [advice](), [alternatives](), [code](), [formatting](), [function](), [literals](), [maintainability](), [readability](), [test](), [testing](), [tests](), [unit-test](), [unit-testing](), [wewut](), [xunit]() ### AI overview The author argues that literal expected values in unit tests improve readability and keep failures focused, while helper functions can broaden the scope of maintenance and couple tests. For changing or inconsistent strings, the article suggests duplication with bulk edits or testing variable-dependent behavior separately from formatting. ### Source excerpt Recently, Stephen Schaub asked the following on the wewut group: Several of the unit test examples in the book verify the construction of both HTML and plain text strings. Jay recommends using literal strings in the assertions. However, this strikes me as not a particularly maintainable approach. If the requirements regarding the formatting of these strings changes (a very likely scenario), every single test that verifies one of these strings using a literal must be updated. Combined with the advice that each test should check only one thing, this leads to a large number of extremely brittle tests. Am I missing something here? I can appreciate the reasons Jay recommends using literals in the tests. However, it seems that we pay a high maintainability price in exchange for the improved readability. I responded to Stephen; however, I've seen similar questions asked a few times. Below are my extended thoughts regarding literals as expected values. In general, given the option of having many similar strings (or any literal) vs a helper function, I would always prefer the literal. When a test is failing I only care about that single failing test. If I have to look at the helper function I no longer have the luxury of staying focused on the single test; now I need to consider what the helper function is giving me and what it's giving all other callers. Suddenly the scope of my work has shifted from one test to all of the tests coupled by this helper function. If this helper function wasn't written by me, this expansion in scope wasn't even my decision, it was forced upon me by the helper function creator. In the best case the helper function could return a single, constant string. The scope expansion becomes even worse when the helper function contains code branches. As for alternatives, my solution would depend on the problem. If the strings were fairly consistent, I would likely simply duplicate everything knowing that any formatting changes can likely be addressed usin ## Working Effectively with Unit Tests Rough Draft Complete DevFeed: [Working Effectively with Unit Tests Rough Draft Complete]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Jay (noreply@blogger.com) Published: 2014-07-01T00:48:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Jay Fields]() Topics: [unit tests](), [test](), [Test-driven development](), [Git](), [Ruby]() Tags: [books](), [git](), [test](), [tests](), [unit-tests](), [wewut](), [writing]() ### AI overview The author reflects on completing the rough draft of Working Effectively with Unit Tests, publishing it early on Leanpub, and using reader feedback to improve the book. The article also describes a script and output-file comparisons used to verify that the book's passing and failing examples continue to behave as intended. ### Source excerpt I finally put the finishing touches on the rough draft of Working Effectively with Unit Tests. It's been an interesting journey thus far, and I'm hoping the attention to detail I've put into the rough draft will translate into an enjoyable read. What I did poorly: I'd written the book's sample before I ever put it on leanpub. Before a book is published you can collect contact and price information from those who are interested. However, once you publish and begin selling, you no longer have the ability to collect the previously mentioned information. I published and began selling my book immediately - and forfeited my chance to collect that information. What I did well: I published early and often. I can't say enough nice things about leanpub. I've gotten tons of feedback on example style, writing style, typos, and content. One reader's suggestion to switch to Kevlin Henney's Java formatting style made my book enjoyable to read on a Kindle. I had twitter followers apologizing for "being pedantic and pointing out typos", and I couldn't have been happier to get the feedback. Each typo I fix makes the book more enjoyable for everyone. If you're going to write a book, get it on leanpub asap and start interacting with your audience. What I learned from Refactoring: Ruby Edition (RRE): RRE contains errors, far too many errors. I vowed to find a better way this time around, and I'm very happy with the results. Every example test in the book can be run, and uses classes also shown in the book. However, writing about tests is a bit tricky: sometimes "failure" is the outcome you're looking to document. Therefore, I couldn't simply write tests for everything. Instead I piped the output to files and used them as example output in the book, but also as verification that what failed once continued to fail in the future (and vice versa). WEwUT has a script that runs every test from the book and overwrites the output files. If the output files are unchanged, I know all the passing