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It's weird to include a testing framework in it. That just speaks to usage of any orchestration class with overridable hooks, and has everything to do with eve

It's weird to include a testing framework in it. That just speaks to usage of any orchestration class with overridable hooks, and has everything to do with events pertaining to domain (xunit's domain being "run a series of isolated tests") and not clarifying lower-level code organization. It's sort of like the author treated onFocus and onBlur in JS DOM events as startup/cleanup. It's just entry/exit orchestration. The editorial stuff about being unnecessary also ignores that unit tests must fully reset the fixture between every test to be isolated--one reason test doubles are nice, they can generally be reset instantly--and that one of the more popular ways to organize unit tests is around common fixture handlers, aka setup/teardown routines. This usually makes sense if you're testing units of an otherwise cohesive module since related operations usually use related fixtures. If it doesn't make sense then, sure, you move the setup/cleanup into each test but it totally craps up being able to review them for validity, etc. Ideally a test is a clean known fixture handed to the test, one state change, and a verification of post-state, nothing more. Anything else complicates the test to some extent or the other, and (though devs get this wrong constantly) readability is paramount in tests or you don't know you're testing the right thing six months from now. Tests have to be their own docs. That's why setup and teardown exists, to hold everything but that. Most of the article was pretty good, though. Just...ruby, python, C++, xunit...misguided testing advice...wtf? Felt like the author was swimming outside their lane and missed a pass in editing, frankly.

gnoack 7y ago
Admittedly the part about xUnit was a slight derail, but I felt it made some sense to mention, as an example for "the framework" invoking cleanup handlers for the developer. The remark about unnecessary tearDown() hooks is probably worth a separate article and not a very compelling argument in such a short form.
- geoelectric 7y ago
  I can see where it's an attractive example for cleanup behavior, for sure. But I do think the distinction between code-level cleanup and domain-level cleanup is important. You can see the fixture management as part of the test code and then they align much more closely. It's usually better to not couple that way, though, and to think of automation as something that fulfills a test instead of being the test. I also know there's a lot of debate over xUnit patterns and, in particular, setup/teardown. My take is that the perceived value depends on a lot on background and how much experience one has actually maintaining automation strategies over time. One of the bigger dangers is losing track of what you're testing so thoroughly that any confidence you might have rests essentially in magical belief instead of periodic review. That especially hits unit tests since they're added from multiple sources, and makes things like standardized fixtures/setup/teardowns pretty useful for alignment. I'll keep a look out for future blog posts. I'm interested in your take.

gnoack 7y ago

Admittedly the part about xUnit was a slight derail, but I felt it made some sense to mention, as an example for "the framework" invoking cleanup handlers for the developer. The remark about unnecessary tearDown() hooks is probably worth a separate article and not a very compelling argument in such a short form.

geoelectric 7y ago
I can see where it's an attractive example for cleanup behavior, for sure. But I do think the distinction between code-level cleanup and domain-level cleanup is important. You can see the fixture management as part of the test code and then they align much more closely. It's usually better to not couple that way, though, and to think of automation as something that fulfills a test instead of being the test. I also know there's a lot of debate over xUnit patterns and, in particular, setup/teardown. My take is that the perceived value depends on a lot on background and how much experience one has actually maintaining automation strategies over time. One of the bigger dangers is losing track of what you're testing so thoroughly that any confidence you might have rests essentially in magical belief instead of periodic review. That especially hits unit tests since they're added from multiple sources, and makes things like standardized fixtures/setup/teardowns pretty useful for alignment. I'll keep a look out for future blog posts. I'm interested in your take.