I'm now writing some unit tests ... I know that the correct way would be to write tests first and then the code, but unfortunately it had to be done t

There's no one right way to test your code

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Style Pass

2022-01-13 10:00:09

I'm now writing some unit tests ... I know that the correct way would be to write tests first and then the code, but unfortunately it had to be done this way.

This is depressing... what causes newbies to feel the need to ask for forgiveness when writing tests? You can tell the poster has either previously copped some snark or has seen someone else lectured online for not doing things the "correct way".

I feel that people can be very prescriptive about how you should test your code, which is puzzling to me. There are so many different use-cases for automated tests that there cannot be one right way to do it. When you're reading blogs and forums you get the impression that you must write "unit tests" (the right way!) and that you need to do test driven development, or else you're some kind of idiot slacker.

In this post I am going to focus on the quiet dominance of "unit tests" as the default way to test your code, and suggest some other testing styles that you can use.