Testing R code

[maurolepore]

Who is the audience?

Anyone who builds durable programs bigger than what they can hold in their brain. This includes many folks at 2DII and beyond.

Why is this important?

(Where you read "apps" think "programs".)

For simple apps, it’s easy enough to remember how the app is supposed to work, so that when you make changes to add new features, you don’t accidentally break existing capabilities. However, as your app gets more complicated it becomes impossible to hold it all in your head simultaneously. Testing is a way to capture desired behaviour of your code, in such a way that you can automatically verify that it keeps working the way you expect. Turning your existing informal tests into code is painful when you first do it, because you need to carefully turn every key press and mouse click into a line of code, but once done, it’s tremendously faster to re-run your tests. -- https://mastering-shiny.org/scaling-testing.html

What should be covered?

https://github.com/2DegreesInvesting/ds.testing#syllabus

Suggested speakers or contributors

@maurolepore with inputs from attendees

Resources

https://github.com/2DegreesInvesting/ds.testing#resources

Checklist

2h before

• Open meetup issue, paste this template and edit as necessary
• Announce on #coding
• Add meetup date, title and link to the invitation on 2dii's calendar

10' before

• Start the meeting.

• Announce on #coding:

  The ds-incubator starts in 10'; please join early so we start on time.
  The meeting room is already open at:
  <LINK WITH PASSWORD>

Start

• 00': Welcome
• 02': Announcements
• 04': Nominate a timekeeper
• 05': Record
• 05': Remind syllabus and requirements
• 06': Explain benefit for the intended audience
• 20': Show the relevance for 2DII (give an example)
• 24': Point to resources to learn more (share materials)
• 25': Round of voices
• 30': End
• 30': Upload video
• 35': Link video under resources