A tweet from Brian Marick induced me to read a paper by Dick Hamlet and Ross Taylor called Partition Testing Does Not Inspire Confidence. In genera

Property-based testing is not the same as partition testing by Mark Seemann

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2021-08-03 00:30:03

A tweet from Brian Marick induced me to read a paper by Dick Hamlet and Ross Taylor called Partition Testing Does Not Inspire Confidence. In general, I find the conclusion fairly intuitive, but on the other hand hardly an argument against property-based testing.

I'll later return to why I find the conclusion intuitive, but first, I'd like to address the implied connection between partition testing and property-based testing. I'll also show a detailed example.

The Hamlet & Taylor paper is exclusively concerned with partition testing, which makes sense, since it's from 1990. As far as I'm aware, property-based testing wasn't invented until later.

Brian Marick extends its conclusions to property-based testing: "I've been a grump about property-based testing because I bought into the conclusion of Hamlet&Taylor's 1990 "Partition testing does not inspire confidence"" Brian Marick This seems to imply that property-based testing isn't effective, because (if you accept the paper's conclusions) partition testing isn't effective.

"I've been a grump about property-based testing because I bought into the conclusion of Hamlet&Taylor's 1990 "Partition testing does not inspire confidence""