Java Reference
In-Depth Information
PC applications were certainly useful, but they were not easy to learn. Every
vendor developed a different user interface: the collection of keystrokes, menu
options, and settings that a user needed to master to use a software package
effectively. Data exchange between applications was difficult, because each
program used a different data format. The Apple Macintosh changed all that in
1984. The designers of the Macintosh had the vision to supply an intuitive user
interface with the computer and to force software developers to adhere to it. It
took Microsoft and PC-compatible manufacturers years to catch up.
Accidental Empires [
4
] is highly recommended for an amusing and irreverent
account of the emergence of personal computers.
At the time of this writing, it is estimated that two in three U.S. households own
a personal computer. Mo
st personal computers are used for accessing
information from online
sources, entertainment, word processing, and home
finance (banking, budgeting, taxes). Some analysts predict that the personal
computer will merge with the television set and cable network into an
entertainment and information appliance.
371
372
8.10 Unit Test Frameworks
Up to now, we have used a very simple approach to testing. We provided tester
classes whose
main
method computes values and prints actual and expected values.
However, that approach has two limitations. It takes some time to inspect the output
and decide whether a test has passed. More importantly, the
main
method gets messy
if it contains many tests.
Unit testing frameworks were designed to quickly execute and evaluate test suites,
and to make it easy to incrementally add test cases. One of the most popular testing
frameworks is JUnit. It is freely available at
http://junit.org
, and it is also built into a
number of development environments, including BlueJ and Eclipse.
Unit test frameworks simplify the task of writing classes that contain many test
cases.
