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Discussion on: You should only write USEFUL tests

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robdwaller profile image
Rob Waller

If tests don't prove code works on any level or provide confidence then there really is no point in writing them. We may as well just accept software development is an unsolvable problem and users can just suck up the bugs.

In my experience all the problems with test, such as mock hell, have nothing to do with tests themselves. They relate to issues such as code design, data preparation and method complexity.

These issues mean there are more paths through the code which makes tests harder to write and means they prove little. But this is not the fault of the tests. It's the fault of the code under test.

As I said I'd definitely look at tools like mutation tests and CRAP scores to help with the non-test related issues which make testing more difficult.

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alainvanhout profile image
Alain Van Hout

The point isn't that test don't provide confidence. It's that they can only show the presence of bug, by virtue of failing when a given bug is present. But importantly, they only do that for the bugs that the implementing developer thought of. They don't show it fall for all possible bugs (unless the implementing develop thought of all of them, which isn't often the case).