Why Do You Run the Test if You Know It Will Fail?

I always run the test, even if I know it is going to fail. Why? Because sometimes I'm wrong and the test unexpectedly passes. There are two reasons for this.

• The code already behaves as the test requires (probably by accident).
• The test was written incorrectly and doesn't test what I think it does. This is bad, because it is not checking the implementation that I thought.

In any case, I double check the test and continue as appropriate.

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Copyright 2003 by Jim Weirich.