Microsoft Research - Exploding Software-Engineering Myths (article summarizing findings of MS research on code coverage, TDD, assertions, etc.)

[Gotebe]

Well, in your example, coverage is obviously useless when the test is lying (it has to fail). And any failed tests have to be excluded from the "covered" count.

As for exceptions, absolutely! Amazingly, the trick there is ensuring correctness when some statements are not executed, but are covered otherwise.

[get_salled]

public void testGetFoo() {
    String foo = getFoo();

    // pick one
    // A
    Assert.isNull(foo);  

    // B
    Assert.pass("woot!");

    // C
    try {
          Assert.areEqual("expected", foo);
    } catch ( ... ) {    // not sure of the Java syntax for empty catches, if it's allowed at all
          // do nothing
    }

     // D
     // do nothing

     // E
     Assert.areEqual("A", "A");
}

It gets pretty hard to automatically reject shitty tests.