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I'm puzzled by people debating tests. why such hate? They catch bugs, prevent breaking changes, and ensure API stability. I have never seen tests preventing me

by h1fra 2y ago

I'm puzzled by people debating tests. why such hate? They catch bugs, prevent breaking changes, and ensure API stability. I have never seen tests preventing me from refactoring anything. I guess it depends on the company and the processes :thinking:

codr7 2y ago
There are different kinds of tests. Integration tests at the outer edges often gives you most bang for buck. Granular, mocked unit tests often add little value and will become a maintenance burden sooner or later. And some of it is unconscious; maybe having that big, comfy test suite is preventing the software from evolving in optimal directions; because it would just be too much work and risk.
HelloNurse 2y ago
I think there is a mostly psychological "problem": tests are not perceived as progress (unless you are mature enough to treat quality assurance as an objective) and finding them fun to write or satisfying to run is an unusual acquired taste.
eithed 2y ago
Tests are tools - you won't be using screwdriver for everything, even though it's a tool that useful in many things. Having said that - tests, codebase and data consistency, static types are things I'd not want to be without
swat535 2y ago
Because writing good tests is very hard and many engineers are simply mediocre so they write brittle tests that require a lot of time to fix and don't actually test the right things (e.g too many mocks) or simply overconfident (like some people in the thread) that their code will always work. Also the TDD cultists are partially to blame for this attitude as well. Instead of focusing on teaching people how to write valuable tests, they decided to preach dogma and that frustrated many engineers. I'm firmly in the circle of writing tests of course, I don't think a system that is not tested should ever be in production (and no, you opening your browser on a local machine to see if it works is not sufficient testing for production..).

by h1fra 2y ago

codr7 2y ago

There are different kinds of tests. Integration tests at the outer edges often gives you most bang for buck. Granular, mocked unit tests often add little value and will become a maintenance burden sooner or later. And some of it is unconscious; maybe having that big, comfy test suite is preventing the software from evolving in optimal directions; because it would just be too much work and risk.

HelloNurse 2y ago

I think there is a mostly psychological "problem": tests are not perceived as progress (unless you are mature enough to treat quality assurance as an objective) and finding them fun to write or satisfying to run is an unusual acquired taste.

eithed 2y ago

Tests are tools - you won't be using screwdriver for everything, even though it's a tool that useful in many things. Having said that - tests, codebase and data consistency, static types are things I'd not want to be without

swat535 2y ago

Because writing good tests is very hard and many engineers are simply mediocre so they write brittle tests that require a lot of time to fix and don't actually test the right things (e.g too many mocks) or simply overconfident (like some people in the thread) that their code will always work. Also the TDD cultists are partially to blame for this attitude as well. Instead of focusing on teaching people how to write valuable tests, they decided to preach dogma and that frustrated many engineers. I'm firmly in the circle of writing tests of course, I don't think a system that is not tested should ever be in production (and no, you opening your browser on a local machine to see if it works is not sufficient testing for production..).