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tombert 9 hours ago

Exhaustive testing is hard, to be fair, especially if you don’t actually understand the code you’re writing. Tools like TLA+ and static analyzers exist precisely for this reason.

An example I use to talk about hidden edge cases:

Imagine we have this (pseudo)code

  fn doSomething(num : int) {
    if num % 2 == 0 {
      return  Math.sqrt(num)
    } else {
       return Math.pow(num, 2)
    }

  }
Someone might see this function, and unit test it based on the if statement like:

    assert(doSomething(4) == 2)
    assert(doSomething(3) == 9)
These tests pass, it’s merged.

Except there’s a bug in this; what if you pass in a negative even number?

Depending on the language, you will either get an exception or maybe a complex answer (which not usually something you want). The solution in this particular case would be to add a conditional, or more simply just make the type an unsigned integer.

Obviously this is just a dumb example, and most people here could pick this up pretty quick, but my point is that sometimes bugs can hide even when you do (what feels like) thorough testing.