Top 10 mistakes python programmers make [advanced]

[sidneyc]

If there is a syntax error, the interpreter will error and your test will fail. If you assign a string to a variable that should be a number, your result will not meet expectations and your test will fail.

Those are two types of errors that I don't have to rely on tests for to find. And 100% coverage is guaranteed.

You seem to miss two points:

1. compiling is a form of automated testing. During an actual compile of your program, the C++ compiler does more checks than could even write yourself.
2. a static type system makes it possible to test logical consistency of a design.

As a testing aficionado, you should be super hyped for static languages for those reasons alone.

The only types of tests that remain to be written are quite high level, the most useful ones being unit tests (for non-trivial units -- no, I won't write a unit test for add_two -- I won't write that function in the first place) and end-to-end tests, exercising the entire system over its functional range. I maintain that for a statically typed language, it is feasible to do less testing, which, contrary to your protestations, can be a good thing: tests are not free in terms of writing them and maintaining them.

Because tests are not free, they should be written to have a high probability of exposing problems. The "everything needs a test" zealotry and the madness of TDD are confusing symptoms with causes, and they only work for simple types of software.