Testing
- 1 minI was talking with a fellow coach last night at Codebar and at one point he asked me whether we write unit tests for our code at 8th Light or integration tests. I said both and he nodded in agreement. He said he had been working on this new feature at his company for which he wrote tests. What he followed that statement with, is usually the most compelling reason for testing. He said he worried because other parts of the codebase didn’t have tests and didn’t know whether his newly introduced feature had broken something else elsewhere.
It is precisely this sort of fear that testing is trying to address amongst other things. The fear that your code could break things. The fear of working with code you don’t own. The fear of changing things.
Fear is a powerful feeling and is not easily conquered. Testing is your ally in that battle and from personal experience I would say a very strong one at that.
Personal blog of Makis Otman