DEV Community

I Stopped Writing Tests and My Code Got Better

Sahil Sahu on November 04, 2025

Yeah, I said it. Come at me. Before you start typing that angry comment, hear me out. I'm not saying "don't test." I'm saying I stopped writing te...
Collapse
 
xwero profile image
david duymelinck

While the title is clickbait, the post has some solid points.

Only testing in production is the one thing I would not recommend. A better solution is using a CI/CD pipeline or an acceptance environment, or both.

Collapse
 
ingosteinke profile image
Ingo Steinke, web developer

I'm still waiting for a project or company advocating test coverage in real life. Except for some formal quality gatekeeping pre-commit hooks and a bunch of professional QA coworkers, all that I kept hearing for decades was that developers tend too much towards perfectionism and we should rather be more pragmatic and accept shipping lower quality.

Of course it makes little sense to strive for 100% code coverage just to satisfy quantitative metrics, as that still does not guarantee 100% edge case coverage and it will waste time testing what was already tested in within a library or would have immediate effects on something already tested within another scenario. On the other hand, most development teams still don't test enough or not at all, and I'm afraid that many of those people will delight in reading a headline like this one. "I Stopped Writing Tests and My Code Got Better" might be true, but it can too easily be misunderstood to justify neglecting quality assurance.

Collapse
 
xwero profile image
david duymelinck

I think the clickbait titles go with the current attention span. If it is not spectacular you don't get views.
It is not a good evolution, but if you can use it to get good information out it is gaming the system, not?

Collapse
 
sahil_sahu profile image
Sahil Sahu

I am agree with you, I am just sharing my experience

Collapse
 
muhammad_haris_be6450c961 profile image
Muhammad Haris

plzz use my Ai Problem solve

Collapse
 
elanatframework profile image
Elanat Framework

A great comment: "Most tests are just checking if functions return what you told them to return. That's not testing, that's just... writing the same logic twice."

Thanks Sahil Sahu.

We have become too addicted to these unit tests.

Collapse
 
sahil_sahu profile image
Sahil Sahu

I've been through that from a very long time.

Collapse
 
andrewbaisden profile image
Andrew Baisden

Writing good tests instead of writing tests for the sake of writing tests is a good solution I find.

Collapse
 
sarahvarghese profile image
Sarah Varghese

True, Mny people dont test well, just run some written tests overall system architecture every components needs to be tested in overall enviroment

Collapse
 
inozem profile image
Sergey Inozemtsev

I actually aim for 100% coverage in my Python projects. It helps track breakpoints after any change. AI handles most of the unit tests.

Collapse
 
nihal_lakra_13d5a8bdbcc19 profile image
Nihal Lakra

Hey bro wanna connect just looking for friends who’s also in web dev

Collapse
 
sahil_sahu profile image
Sahil Sahu

sure