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Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
geist@xoxo.zone wrote:

After an extended side-quest getting befuddled by dependency errors, I reflect on testing philosophies and learning how to learn: https://geist.is/adventuring/2025/error-code-for-coder/

#DecemberAdventure #Rust

Screenshot of my blog post. It reads: Learning how to learn As a closing note, I first heard the idea that the purposes of unit tests is to force you to use your own API from (as I recall) an episode of The Bike Shed, fairly early in my career. A while later, I listened to another episode (potentially with the same hosts), who advocated for “DAMP” tests, standing for descriptive and meaningful phrases. This meant building up your own small set of test-only functions so that your tests read like your intent (closer to the example I gave above). I remember being quite confused by this at the time, given that these two ideas are not really compatible. In retrospect, I consider that an important early nudge towards an idea that would take a few more years to settle in for me: memorizing principles and best practices only gets you so far; to continue to learn, you have to know the underlying reason for doing things, and consider whether they apply in any given situation. Becoming a collector of trivia that you can wield with the weight of best practice is a seductive rut, but one I’m happy to have since escaped. I’d later learn that this is meant moving beyond the novice stage in the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition.