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Nothing cements the uselessness of unit tests more, for me, than not surfacing bugs in new code and having wasted all that time preemptively debugging code that

by jseban 5y ago

Nothing cements the uselessness of unit tests more, for me, than not surfacing bugs in new code and having wasted all that time preemptively debugging code that works.

adhesive_wombat 5y ago
Then don't write tests for that code. Writing tests for trivial stuff is pointless. Write tests for code that could actually be wrong, or where you need to prove to yourself or others that the invariant is maintained. Critically, where it's important that the invariant stays true even after refactoring. It's also valuable to have some testing framework available, just so that it's then easy to write tests when they're needed (which comes back around to "make sure that your objects can ever be constructed" thing). Not all unit tests have to be preemptive, even if the presence of the ability to quickly write them is.
- monksy 5y ago
  My reaction to this is... if you're writing tests for pointless things to test.. it means that your testing framework/approach may not be giving you more of what you need... or it could be a defect in the language. In Unit testing, you should only be testing the code you wrote. (Contract testing is more of an assurance test) In Java you have to write unit tests for your getters and setters because they might do more than what you expected (as that's within the realm of possiblity) If you find yourself writting getters or setter tests .. you should be looking into a better language like Groovy, Scala that do it for you, or something like Lombok or Records in later JDKs.
- jseban 5y ago
  > Write tests for code that could actually be wrong, or where you need to prove to yourself or others that the invariant is maintained. Yes, what you need to do in the end, is to use your judgement. But you will get a surprising amount of pushback against this obvious common sense solution. From management who thinks it's too risky, and from developers who have chosen a technical career just because they want to rely on their intelligence, and black and white thinking, and now you're asking them to make trade offs and decisions which is management territory. The way out in my opinion is to make technical leaders that have actual authority, down to the details.
  - dhzhzjsbevs 5y ago
    If you ever meet a developer doesn't like making trade offs show them the door, it's basically all we do.
dhzhzjsbevs 5y ago
Testing isn't only about bugs. Suggesting that's the only benefit is a strawman. Testing forces you to design better code. Sure you can mock the crap out of things and still create trash but if you think critically it usually affords making more robust code.

by jseban 5y ago

Nothing cements the uselessness of unit tests more, for me, than not surfacing bugs in new code and having wasted all that time preemptively debugging code that works.

adhesive_wombat 5y ago

Then don't write tests for that code. Writing tests for trivial stuff is pointless. Write tests for code that could actually be wrong, or where you need to prove to yourself or others that the invariant is maintained. Critically, where it's important that the invariant stays true even after refactoring. It's also valuable to have some testing framework available, just so that it's then easy to write tests when they're needed (which comes back around to "make sure that your objects can ever be constructed" thing). Not all unit tests have to be preemptive, even if the presence of the ability to quickly write them is.

monksy 5y ago
My reaction to this is... if you're writing tests for pointless things to test.. it means that your testing framework/approach may not be giving you more of what you need... or it could be a defect in the language. In Unit testing, you should only be testing the code you wrote. (Contract testing is more of an assurance test) In Java you have to write unit tests for your getters and setters because they might do more than what you expected (as that's within the realm of possiblity) If you find yourself writting getters or setter tests .. you should be looking into a better language like Groovy, Scala that do it for you, or something like Lombok or Records in later JDKs.
jseban 5y ago
> Write tests for code that could actually be wrong, or where you need to prove to yourself or others that the invariant is maintained. Yes, what you need to do in the end, is to use your judgement. But you will get a surprising amount of pushback against this obvious common sense solution. From management who thinks it's too risky, and from developers who have chosen a technical career just because they want to rely on their intelligence, and black and white thinking, and now you're asking them to make trade offs and decisions which is management territory. The way out in my opinion is to make technical leaders that have actual authority, down to the details.
- dhzhzjsbevs 5y ago
  If you ever meet a developer doesn't like making trade offs show them the door, it's basically all we do.

dhzhzjsbevs 5y ago

Testing isn't only about bugs. Suggesting that's the only benefit is a strawman. Testing forces you to design better code. Sure you can mock the crap out of things and still create trash but if you think critically it usually affords making more robust code.