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Writing Unit Tests for Existing Code?
out-of-order asks: "I recently became a member of a large software organization which has placed me in the role of preparing the Unit Test effort for a component of software. Problem is that everything that I've read about Unit Testing pertains to 'test-driven' design, writing test cases first, etc. What if the opposite situation is true? This organization was writing code before I walked in the door and now I need to test it. What methodology is there for writing test cases for code that already exists?"
Gimme a fucking break.
Every testing job I've ever had we've had ZERO documentation. NADA. ZIP.
How do we survive? WE TEST. We put down the book (like we had one to begin with) and we test. Surely you have a server somewhere running dev-level code (at least) and you start poking around. Sure, its less than ideal, but you deal with it. And you bitch about how crappy it is and how it goes against all the principals of so-called 'real world' methodologies.
The thing is, this is how the real world does it.
Sure, in a perfect world, everyone has their shit in order. But in a perfect world we're not all competing against code monkeys working for 1/10th of what we make and that live in a 3rd world country.
Religion is for people afraid of going to hell.