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Executable Documentation: Test-First in Action

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Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation. Software Engineering (ISoLA 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13702))

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Abstract

Regarding documentation as anything that supports understanding, we present two test-first scenarios of executable documentation that involve and support different roles during program development through concrete data visualizations. The first is a teaching scenario. Within classical programming, different stages of executable documentation provide faceted layers of self-learning and user-centric diagnostics. Students and teachers benefit from auto-didactic exploration, appropriate diagram syntheses for runtime visualization, and automated test case generation. The latter can be created using reference implementations provided by the teacher but can also be used to foster the dialog between students and tutors. The second scenario introduces a new approach to WYSIWYG GUI editing that is able to render the runtime GUI appearance in real-time within the editor. Using scenario-based test cases, users can seamlessly experience, inspect, and test the GUI while they are editing. The paper discusses the impact of the provided tangible experiences and their role in modern IDEs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We acknowledge that such test cases can also provide additional information. However, the interpretation of this data is commonly tightly bound to the skill set of the developer and mostly not directly supported by the IDE.

  2. 2.

    https://code.visualstudio.com.

  3. 3.

    https://www.typescriptlang.org.

  4. 4.

    https://angular.io.

  5. 5.

    https://jupyter.org.

  6. 6.

    https://visualstudio.microsoft.com.

  7. 7.

    https://www.eclipse.org.

  8. 8.

    https://www.eclipse.org/modeling/emf.

  9. 9.

    https://github.com/kieler/klassviz.

  10. 10.

    https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jebbs.plantuml.

  11. 11.

    https://github.com/dongli0x00/python-preview.

  12. 12.

    https://docs.python.org/3/library/doctest.html.

  13. 13.

    https://flutterflow.io.

  14. 14.

    https://bubble.io.

  15. 15.

    https://developer.apple.com/xcode/swiftui.

  16. 16.

    https://storybook.js.org.

  17. 17.

    http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/3e/labs.html.

  18. 18.

    https://reactjs.org/docs/introducing-jsx.html.

  19. 19.

    https://angular.io/guide/template-syntax.

  20. 20.

    https://www.overleaf.com.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chair of Programming Systems, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany

    Steven Smyth, Jonas Schürmann, Florian Karbus & Bernhard Steffen

  2. Real-Time and Embedded Systems Group, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany

    Jette Petzold & Reinhard von Hanxleden

  3. Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Tiziana Margaria

Authors
  1. Steven Smyth
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  2. Jette Petzold
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  3. Jonas Schürmann
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  4. Florian Karbus
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  5. Tiziana Margaria
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  6. Reinhard von Hanxleden
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  7. Bernhard Steffen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Steven Smyth .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Limerick, CSIS and Lero, Limerick, Ireland

    Tiziana Margaria

  2. TU Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Bernhard Steffen

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Smyth, S. et al. (2022). Executable Documentation: Test-First in Action. In: Margaria, T., Steffen, B. (eds) Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation. Software Engineering. ISoLA 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13702. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19756-7_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19756-7_8

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