The Butt Ugly Weblog

Unit testing

From SnipSnap: I've been programming for more than 20 years from machine code (A0 FF) to Prolog, from line editing to CASE tools. The only thing that really change my relationship with software development are unit tests. It changed the way I think about my programms, I'm much more confident in what I do.

Right on!

Rigorous Unit Testing has really increased both my productivity, and my confidence in the code I write. I can now refactor stuff that previously I would've not dared to touch without fearing that everything will break.

Someone sends in a bug report - I write a Unit Test to test for it, and I don't have to worry about that bug ever surfacing again. I think of a new feature - I write a Unit Test to check its correctness before even I start writing the code.

Unit Tests also function as a sort of a development log: you see what kind of problems you typically have, and what kind of things you tend to test the most, which reveals interesting things about your coding habits and weak points.