Ask HN: Are developers actually bad at self-testing?

1 points by itsdrewmiller 8y ago ↗ HN

I've heard this claimed before and even parroted it myself, but I'm curious if there is anything empirical backing this up or if it's just a pseudoaphorism to justify not doing a tedious part of the job.

1 comment

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chrisbennet 8y ago ↗

I don’t doubt that it is true. Same for proof reading your own writing. In your own code, you see the “happy path” (what it is supposed to do) so much clearer than the other paths. Someone else looking at the same code doesn’t necessarily know what it th code is “supposed” to do so they see the other paths more easily.