I was chatting with a friend and we agreed tests are both hard and not hard. Assuming you write tests, I’m curious to see what your responses are to the following:
1. What about tests do you find hard?
2. What about writing tests do you find hard?
3. What do you think others find hard about tests?
4. What other test related questions should we ask ourselves? (And your answer)
Software tests, or educational assessment tests?<p>They have overlap, but know which you mean will help HN answer better :)<p>Software tests are hard to write <i>right</i> because you don't know what you don't know - you have no idea what kind of garbage data or garbage system or garbage network the software will run on<p>To cover as much of that as is practical is hard<p>Educational assessment tests are hard because you <i>do</i> know what you know - but you're trying to ferret-out what the folks you've been trying to teach have learned<p>If you go for multiple-choice, true/false, or fill-in-the-blank, you have to make sure you:<p>- word the questions in such a way as to not "give away" the answer
- ask questions the participants have an <i>actual</i> chance of answering (not based on an endnote from the middle of the glossary)
-<p>If you go for short or essay answer, you have similar issues:<p>- expectations-setting on length, style, etc
- word questions in such a way as to give the participants a reasonable chance of answering them <i>well</i><p>There are other problems around writing <i>good</i> tests - but there are a handful