Code Coverage: Explained to the Tech Advert (Original from 2012)

My wife is not a software engineer, and whenever I try to explain to her what I do at work, I typically can only get in a thirty second conversation before she changes the subject. After many, many attempts I finally found the perfect analogy for explaining code coverage - a recent focus of a customer project.

Choose Your Own Adventure books!

When I was in elementary school, my brother and I were obsessed with these books. We loved the different ways you can go through the stories. My wife has also read several and is a fan of re-reading books so, luckily, she knew the concept well. Once I established the baseline – Choose Your Own Adventure books - it was easy to explain code coverage. We can test the book by re-reading it multiple times choosing different paths (test cases) and coloring each page as we go (coverage). This process of coloring the book allows us to know we have read every path through the book (completeness).

It goes to show that with a little bit of creativity, you can get a non-engineer to have a full two minute conversation about your job!