Question

I want to write an algorithm (a bunch of machine learning algorithms) in C/C++ or maybe in Java, possibly in Python. The language doesn’t really matter to me – I’m familiar with all of the above.

What matters to me is the testing. I want to train my models using training data. So I have the test input and I know what the output should be and I compare it to the model’s output. What kind of test is this? Is it a unit test? How do I approach the problem? I can see that I can write some code to check what I need checking but I want to separate testing from main code. Testing is a well developed field and I’ve seen this done before but I don’t know the name and type of this particular kind of testing so that I can read up on it and not create a mess. I’d be grateful if you could let me know what this testing method is called.

Answer 1

Your best bet is watch the psychology of testing videos from the tetsing God http://misko.hevery.com/

Link of Misko videos:

http://misko.hevery.com/presentations/

And read this Google testing guide http://misko.hevery.com/code-reviewers-guide/

Edited:

Anyone can write tests, they are really simple and there is no magic to write a test, you can simply do something like:

var sut = new MyObject();
var res = sut.IsValid();
if(res != true)
{
  throw new ApplicationException("message");
}

That is the theory of course these days we have tools to simplify the tests and we can write something like this:

new MyObject().IsValid().Should().BeTrue();

But what you should do is focus on writing testable code, that’s the magic key

Just follow the psychology of testing videos from Misko to get you started