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Comment by handbanana | Hacker News Reader

I see where your coming from, but I disagree. This isn't a new OS, its a tiny charts library/utility. I'm more inclined to contribute because there are no tests. Either way, someone could PR tests if they wished. Perhaps your comment should have been such a PR? ;)

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Why would lack of tests be a measure for your desire to contribute?

Possibly because it doubles the amount of work to make small changes, because you also have to learn the testing setup and write tests for your change?

> Perhaps your comment should have been such a PR? ;)

I really hate seeing this used in discussion. Just because it's open source does not mean it's immune from criticism. Yes, technically some random HN'er could spend tens of hours writing unit tests and submit a PR, but really this is a task for the library author/maintainer.

Having tests is a measure of quality, and should be cared about if you want people using your library.

The library author has already invested probably hundreds of hours creating the library; if someone who benefits from it only has to spend tens of hours writing the unit tests, they've saved an order of magnitude of time.

We need to stop thinking of OSS as something we're entitled to, that if a stranger doesn't put in enough free labour we're allowed to complain about it. I try to view my dependencies as favours other people have done for me. You wouldn't nitpick about a lack of tests after someone wrote a whole charting library for you; you'd thank them and add your own tests.

And we need to stop thinking of criticism as complaining. I'm very grateful for the OSS dependencies that I use in my projects and often contribute back to them, but I wouldn't touch a project without tests with a ten foot pole. I don't mean that in a bad way, for others it might fit their requirements fine. I'm guessing the author of this project would like people to actually use it, so I don't know why we should avoid giving this sort of feedback just because it's free labour.

Yeah, it's fair to provide criticism... my issue was more with the idea that the library author is responsible for doing what the consumers request, that the burden is 100% on the author. In my ideal world, this project would now be a community effort, and anything the community wants can be implemented by the community.

I was hoping the winking face would have led readers to understand that my suggestion was made in jest.

My point was: Many are dogmatic about tests these days, and I find it refreshing there are no tests.

Tests can be added later for something like this library, if/when the need arises - or when someone decides to spend "tens of hours" writing them.

Tests can be a measure of quality, but they aren't the only measure - and do not apply in all cases

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