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> ... We had very poor test coverage in the areas most in need of refactoring because they were the oldest code, written before we established good test practic

by aazaa 6y ago

> ... We had very poor test coverage in the areas most in need of refactoring because they were the oldest code, written before we established good test practices. That's probably not a coincidence. I like to ask those most strongly opposed to test-first development how they refactor code. I have yet to get an answer the leads to anything other than a rewrite at some point. Of course, the rewrite might be coming for the test-first codebase as well. But in that case, the test suite can be leveraged to great effect as a detailed specifications document. This is one of the benefits of test suites that doesn't get enough attention.

bearjaws 6y ago
How is this a test-first argument? You can write tests at anytime, bad discipline is bad discipline. I've never worked somewhere that didn't write tests because "they didn't write them first", they didn't write them because they were an immature organization. My current job leaves it up to the developers, and most don't write tests first. Its no miracle that despite us not writing tests first, all changes have their unit tests, integration tests, and end to end tests. This is due to the fact its baked into our SDLC and enforced in code review.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  > You can write tests at anytime Actually, every single Java enterprise application I've worked on for the past 20 years has been test-resistant: the developers declare everything "public static" so none of the application can be run without running all of the rest of it (since each class imports another that transitively imports everything else, all with static initializers that read configuration files and connect to live database instances). Every refactor/rewrite I've ever suggested has been specifically to allow tests to be written.
ratww 6y ago
Wait, this is confusing. By test-first do you mean TDD? Even if you don't do TDD you gotta have tests before refactoring, I've never seen anyone writing tests after refactoring. I don't think this is controversial at all. Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong. (I've seen refactoring without testing but that's another matter)

by aazaa 6y ago

bearjaws 6y ago

How is this a test-first argument? You can write tests at anytime, bad discipline is bad discipline. I've never worked somewhere that didn't write tests because "they didn't write them first", they didn't write them because they were an immature organization. My current job leaves it up to the developers, and most don't write tests first. Its no miracle that despite us not writing tests first, all changes have their unit tests, integration tests, and end to end tests. This is due to the fact its baked into our SDLC and enforced in code review.

commandlinefan 6y ago
> You can write tests at anytime Actually, every single Java enterprise application I've worked on for the past 20 years has been test-resistant: the developers declare everything "public static" so none of the application can be run without running all of the rest of it (since each class imports another that transitively imports everything else, all with static initializers that read configuration files and connect to live database instances). Every refactor/rewrite I've ever suggested has been specifically to allow tests to be written.

ratww 6y ago

Wait, this is confusing. By test-first do you mean TDD? Even if you don't do TDD you gotta have tests before refactoring, I've never seen anyone writing tests after refactoring. I don't think this is controversial at all. Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong. (I've seen refactoring without testing but that's another matter)