LectroCheck

Writing unit tests is an effective coding practice that reduces development time while raising our confidence in the software we create. But, if we're brutally honest, the work is often tedious and time consuming, tempting us to skimp on test cases. Is there anything we can do to reduce the pain while keeping the gain?

Yes! With QuickCheck for the Haskell programming language, Koen Claessen and John Hughes demonstrated that not only can your computer run your test cases, but also it can create them for you!

The first time I used QuickCheck for my Haskell programs, I was sold. It caught problems I never would have thought to look for let alone test for, and it did so elegantly.

When working in Perl, I missed QuickCheck. In August 2004, I finally got around to doing something about it. The result is LectroTest, a horribly named, automatic, specification-based testing tool for Perl.