[plt-dev] random testing, we need to do more of this

From: Robby Findler (robby at eecs.northwestern.edu)
Date: Mon Jan 25 07:36:22 EST 2010

Yes, thanks.

Robby

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 6:33 AM, Michael Sperber
<sperber at deinprogramm.de> wrote:
>
> Robby Findler <robby at eecs.northwestern.edu> writes:
>
>> On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 2:05 AM, Michael Sperber
>> <sperber at deinprogramm.de> wrote:
>>> I'll point out that a quite complete port of the original QuickCheck is
>>> sitting in the deinprogramm/quickcheck collection.  I wrote it for our
>>> teaching languages (where feedback indicates it's a success), but it's
>>> by no means restricted to that.
>>
>> Can you say more about how you use it in the course? Specifically,
>> where do you start using it and what kinds of invariants do you use
>> with it?
>
> I have only spotty information at this point, as I'm not currently
> teaching: Peter Thiemann and Torsten Grust are.  (We're writing that
> paper right now, so you'll get more info soon.)  If it would have been
> me, I would have introduced it one-shot at the point where we've done a
> few check-expects and some smart-hiney student asks whether we can't
> write checks for properties rather than cases.
>
> The book draft chapter is here:
>
> http://www.deinprogramm.de/dmda/prop.pdf
>
> It's in German, but the code samples are in English, so you should be
> able to get the drift: reflexivity, symmetry, transitivity,
> anti-symmetry, commutativity, associativity, distributivity, inverse
> function are the properties I'd tell students to watch out for<.
>
> Also, I pick it up again in the chapter on search trees, where it's
> properties like "what goes in comes out again" etc.
>
> Does this help?
>
> --
> Cheers =8-} Mike
> Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla
>


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