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Discussion on: Backfilling Tests

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Ben Halpern

Even though test coverage metrics are fallible, I found having the scoreboard can sort of gamify the process and be really motivating. We went from bad to good pretty quickly with the fun of seeing the test coverage metric rise to 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, etc.

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Beekey Cheung

Yeah I get how that motivation is important. How do you mitigate the fallacies? One of my biggest concerns is the false sense of security in covering code, but not making the assertions necessary to truly validate it.

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Ben Halpern

I think it's a subtle culture thing. We really addressed this early and often. We didn't try to put pressure on the number itself, we mostly let the motivation happen on its own. Code reviews really don't care about the optimization, and we tried to proceed with self-awareness at every turn.

It's the little things. It's easy to proceed with blind optimism or ignorance.