Occasionally we (thats the OSAF we) get into a discussion on IRC about what is a unit test and what is an integration test and even sometimes what are regression tests. Nothing glazes the eyes of the average developer over any faster than two TDD folks talking about the nitty-gritty of testing ;)

So it was interesting to run across a
blog post on
Planet RDF of a small list of things that make up
A Set of Unit Testing Rules.

A test is not a unit test if:

• It talks to the database
• It communicates across the network
• It touches the file system
• It can’t run at the same time as any of your other unit tests
• You have to do special things to your environment (such as editing config files) to run it.

Tests that do these things aren’t bad. Often they are worth writing, and they can be written in a unit test harness. However, it is important to be able to separate them from true unit tests so that we can keep a set of tests that we can run fast whenever we make our changes.

We probably need to take a look at our current tests for Chandler and start grouping the different tests in a way that devs can choose which they want to run. Currently we have the “you can get it in any colour you want … as long as it’s black” mindset ;)

While my previous post was all about the work side of my recent trip, this post is going to be all about the non-work happenings.

Instead of staying at a hotel for the trip I had decided to see if anyone had a spare couch or bed. I knew that if I stayed at a hotel I would just end up spending most of my time at work and probably miss out on seeing any of the city. So after sending out an email I got a reply from Bryan Stearns saying that he and Gina had already offered his couch to Jeffrey. After some back and forth we figured that I could sleep on the air mattress.

works for me :)

Anywho, it basically ended up that I slept on the couch because Jeffrey was staying at some friends (that’s when I learned he was moving to Berkeley!) even tho Jeffrey still stayed over a couple nights. It was, I think, the best way to do things – we ended up having some great conversations since we shared a lot of similiar interests. Gina and Bryan cooked dinner a couple of times (yummy!) and Jeffrey cooked breakfast one morning.

By far the best night was when I took the two of them out to dinner as a thank-you outing for the great time and Bryan took us on a driving tour of San Francisco. I saw a ton of things that I never would have been able to see if I was just wandering about on my own – he had an amazing amount of info on the city. We ended up at Fisherman’s Wharf were I got to see the tall ship (and dang if I can’t remember it’s name!). After that we went to an amazing seafood restuarant and had some of the best food I’ve had in a long long time. I was very happy to see that they were “communal plate” people like myself :)

I’m not putting into this post even 1/4 of all that went on, but basically wanted to get some overall thoughts down about how Gina and Bryan made the non-work part of my trip actually the best part of the trip I think. They were amazing hosts and I enjoyed every bit of it.

Oh! I would be totally remiss if I don’t mention the spectacular view they have of the San Francisco Bay Bridge! WOW! It was a total treat to wake up each morning and look at the fog covering the bridge and then watch it slowly recede as the sun rose.

Last week I was in San Francisco working in our office and I had a blast. Meeting all the people and seeing the different conference rooms was very enjoyable. I think the most fun was actually being able to eat lunch with the crew on Tuesday. Normally the email goes out saying what the lunch for Tuesday is and I have to sit at home and just day dream about whatever food choice is being served :) But this time I actually was able to enjoy it in person: pizza! hehehe, figures when I’m there they have something that I would normally have here in philly :) but it was still fun sitting in the crowd eating pizza with the others.

I also enjoyed being able to work on the tinderbox servers physically. I was able to take care of a number of items on my personal todo list that involved a lot of tedious steps that would have been painful over a remote session :) It helps to now know the actual layout of the room so if I have to walk someone thru restarting one of the tboxes I can give accurate instructions :)

One thing I didn’t count on was not being as productive there as I am at home. I was really missing my multiple server with multiple monitors setup that I use daily. While at OSAF I was just using my powerbook, and while it has a nice wide screen – nothing beats four monitors when you are tracking down multi-step problems :)

Another issue that I was expecting was the amount of socializing that had happened. Working from home does have certain distractions, but that is normally limited because it’s only a couple of people at home with me. At work I had oodles of people to get distracted by :) But I knew that going into the situation and the socialization was actually part of my task while there.

All in all it was a very successful trip. I got to meet new co-workers, saw the new offices, worked on some physical server issues and enjoyed the trip while still getting some work done ;)