Lead Developer, business owner, US Army veteran. I build things for the web. My website is a bunch of HTML pages that didn't need a framework. Yours can be too!
Yes, and I'm amazed that this is even something anyone would think to ask in 2018 (No offense Ben).
Some people say that front-end unit testing won't catch bugs... and it won't. Not for new development anyway, just like if you don't write tests for edge cases you don't know about in the back-end it won't catch those either. The beauty of a robust and comprehensive testing platform isn't that it catches the bug in the story you're working on TODAY (Although it WILL and you won't think about it because you expect those tests to fail until you're done building). It will catch the bug in the story 6 months from now when a completely different developer has no idea what you did and changes something important to this functionality.
This is why there are so many people who argue AGAINST unit testing. They don't understand WHY you do it. It's just one part of the trifecta of tested, modular and separated concerns. It keeps your app stable. You do all three, and you might never see a broken unit test... not because they're useless, but because you built the thing well (and yes you can have modular code with poor separation of concerns... It will make you want to cry).
Our unit test coverage is actually (much) higher in the front-end than back-end right now, and we have both Protractor and Selenium integration and E2E tests. For almost a decade front-end applications have had just as much application logic that can be easily unit tested as any back-end service. We basically just treat it like any other microservice, but with quirks. A team thinking that they don't need to test the front-end tells me that either they have a very simple front-end (so how complex could the back-end be?) or they are stuck in 2005 with a 'just the front-end' bias.
Neither is a great sign for a modern web application, leaves a TON of logic untested and is going to fail to draw top talent your way. All of that from a simple interview question 'Do you do front-end testing?'.
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
Yes, and I'm amazed that this is even something anyone would think to ask in 2018 (No offense Ben).
Some people say that front-end unit testing won't catch bugs... and it won't. Not for new development anyway, just like if you don't write tests for edge cases you don't know about in the back-end it won't catch those either. The beauty of a robust and comprehensive testing platform isn't that it catches the bug in the story you're working on TODAY (Although it WILL and you won't think about it because you expect those tests to fail until you're done building). It will catch the bug in the story 6 months from now when a completely different developer has no idea what you did and changes something important to this functionality.
This is why there are so many people who argue AGAINST unit testing. They don't understand WHY you do it. It's just one part of the trifecta of tested, modular and separated concerns. It keeps your app stable. You do all three, and you might never see a broken unit test... not because they're useless, but because you built the thing well (and yes you can have modular code with poor separation of concerns... It will make you want to cry).
Our unit test coverage is actually (much) higher in the front-end than back-end right now, and we have both Protractor and Selenium integration and E2E tests. For almost a decade front-end applications have had just as much application logic that can be easily unit tested as any back-end service. We basically just treat it like any other microservice, but with quirks. A team thinking that they don't need to test the front-end tells me that either they have a very simple front-end (so how complex could the back-end be?) or they are stuck in 2005 with a 'just the front-end' bias.
Neither is a great sign for a modern web application, leaves a TON of logic untested and is going to fail to draw top talent your way. All of that from a simple interview question 'Do you do front-end testing?'.