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randomdata parent
> does a successful test mean successful code

A successful test implies that the documentation is true. That is, after all, why you are writing tests: Documentation – To explain to future developers the intent and usage behind the code you wrote. You could just as well write the documentation in Word instead, but then you'd lose the ability to perform machine verification of the documentation, which is a huge boon to moving codebases where the documentation and code are likely to fall out of sync if one is not incredibly careful (although perhaps LLMs will some day bridge that gap?).

The documentation being true does not imply that the documentation is useful, of course. Writing useful documentation is still an art.


tennis_80
This is a reason I’m very keen on making sure tests are focused on requirements rather than code.

A few jobs ago I would often be in a team where the entire team had turned over several times, we would be asked to do large updates to a legacy application or bump lots of dependencies and just not break anything. When pushed the product owner wouldn’t be able to describe what the app was supposed to do, particularly for unusual types of users (the account / user modelling was chaotic so say, several billing accounts per user, each with different products and access levels). At that point “foo calls bar” doesn’t clarify much intent.

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