What you're missing is that most people in web dev use a full featured framework like Django or Rails and do not need unit tests nearly as much as integration t

What you're missing is that most people in web dev use a full featured framework like Django or Rails and do not need unit tests nearly as much as integration tests because very, very, very often most of the architectural decisions have been made for them and the framework linking it all together is where mismatches between expectations seep in. "Wups, I pluralized this thing that should have been singular in the routes / urls file" Also, when developing APIs for the front end it's pretty unlikely that I need to test Rabbit.permanent_url on its own and much more likely I need to test things like listing all the rabbits for a given rabbit farm that are candidates for sale in the local meat market. Where exactly should this test go? The framework handles all the magic SQL generation and the frontend folks really only care about input -> output. If you're building everything from the ground up, then of course there will be way more unit tests, but with an established framework you don't have to test everything. You trust the framework to get some things right for you.