11 Early Testing

On the Assignments page, you will notice a “Tests” deadline for several homeworks.

Soon after the assignment goes out, we ask you to submit your initial round of tests for that homework.

Yes, you probably will not yet have had time to write the implementation for it. That’s the point.

Your tests will be run against wheat and chaffs, and you will get a report on how well they did. The report will not tell you what went wrong, but it will give you a preliminary sense of whether you’ve done a good job or need to do better.

You will get another chance to turn in tests along with your final program. Naturally, we will expect your tests to be no worse, and hopefully better, over this time.

To incentivize you to write good tests up front, the majority of your testing grade for each assignment will come from your initial test submission. By finding good tests later you can still improve your testing grade, but a poor job of testing early will weigh heavily against your testing grade, regardless of the quality of your final tests.