{"id":11095,"date":"2014-03-27T11:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T15:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simpleprogrammer.com\/?p=11095"},"modified":"2018-04-12T00:56:29","modified_gmt":"2018-04-12T04:56:29","slug":"views-test-driven-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simpleprogrammer.com\/views-test-driven-development\/","title":{"rendered":"My Views On Test Driven Development"},"content":{"rendered":"

I used to be a huge supporter of TDD, but lately, I’ve become much more pragmatic about it.
\nIn this video, I discuss test driven development and what my current views on it are.<\/p>\n

[responsive_video]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wryn6vFwqn8[\/responsive_video]
\n[blank_space height=’3em’]
\nFull transcript:<\/p>\n

John<\/b>:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hey, John Sonmez from <\/span>simpleprogrammer.com<\/a>.\u00a0 This week, I want to talk about, yes, a technical topic.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to be talking about test driven development.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got a few controversial views on test driven development, but I\u2019ll explain why I hold those views.\u00a0 Hopefully, I\u2019ll convince you at least to some degree that what I\u2019m saying makes some sense.<\/span><\/p>\n

I used to be a really big proponent of test driven development.\u00a0 I used to really push for it really hard way back when hardly anyone was doing unit test.\u00a0 Definitely, not very many people were doing test driven development.\u00a0 I would often go into an organization or join a team, and I\u2019d really push for test driven development and for unit testing.\u00a0 This was a good thing.\u00a0 I ended up improving a lot of the quality of code by pushing for test driven development and pushing for unit testing in general, but I was a little bit too strict about this.\u00a0 I had code coverage requirements of around 95% asking that 95% of the production code be covered by tests.<\/p>\n

Obviously, my views have changed on test driven development or I wouldn\u2019t be telling you this.\u00a0 They haven’t changed a huge degree.\u00a0 They\u2019ve changed to be more pragmatic.\u00a0 At least that\u2019s how I think of it.\u00a0 Let me explain, first of all, why I think test driven development is good, especially if you\u2019re not doing any kind of unit testing at all, I\u2019d encourage you to do some kind of test driven development.\u00a0 That\u2019s because the biggest benefit for me for doing test driven development that I found is it helps you become better at writing good code.<\/p>\n

The reason why this is true is because when you write the test first, it forces you to use the APIs of your code.\u00a0 It forces you to use that production code so that influences you to make the structure of that code better for being used and to be more understandable.\u00a0 When we just write a bunch of code first where you don\u2019t think about how it\u2019s going to be used, we are guessing at how people are going to use it or how easy this is going to be to use.\u00a0 When you write unit test first and then you write the code to make those unit test pass, you\u2019re basically starting out by defining the API which is really valuable for writing quality clear code that\u2019s easy to understand.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s really the big benefit for me.\u00a0 Of course, there\u2019s regression as well.\u00a0 You can run those unit tests but I tend to think that regression is not so important anymore as far as unit testing goes.\u00a0 Now, don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 You still have automated test at a higher level, but as far as unit testing goes those regression tests really don\u2019t prove much.\u00a0 I found that in most complicated software systems when you unit test fail, we have to go and try and debug this and figure out why this unit test fail and most of the time it\u2019s a false alarm.<\/p>\n

I would say that there were very few times that a unit test has failed where I said, \u201cOh, this caught a bug.\u201d\u00a0 More often than not, I\u2019ve gone and said, \u201cWell, is this test actually correct?\u201d or, \u201cOh, yeah, yeah.\u00a0 That was expected,\u201d or, \u201cThis mock failed.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s the bad side of it.<\/p>\n

Let me tell you what I think now.\u00a0 I think now that test driven is like training wheels for writing good code.\u00a0 It should be used in certain cases but not all the time.<\/p>\n

A lot of times we end up just blanket and force test driven development.\u00a0 What we end up having is a code that has tons of mocks or dependencies passed in.\u00a0 We might use inversion of control or dependency inversion containers to try and pass all kinds of dependencies into our code, and then we\u2019re just going to mock it up in unit tests when we\u2019re doing test driven development.\u00a0 This is a bad way to go because those tests become harder to write than the actual code and the test code that we write ends up being error prone and we could have bugs in the test codes.\u00a0 Who is going to test the test code?\u00a0 Are we going to write tests to test the test code?\u00a0 No, we\u2019re not going to do that.<\/p>\n

I think it makes a lot of sense to be pragmatic about it.\u00a0 If you\u2019re just starting out writing code, you should definitely be doing test driven development for all your code because you need to learn how to write a good code.\u00a0 When I started doing test driven development it really taught me how to write good code, how to write good APIs and really improve the quality of my code.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve been writing code for a while, if you\u2019ve been doing test driven development, you will probably find this point where you start to feel like these tests aren\u2019t adding value.\u00a0 When you feel like tests aren\u2019t adding value, this is my personal belief, stop writing those tests.\u00a0 You want to be able to test code with your test driven development or when you\u2019re writing a unit test that makes sense where it\u2019s going to give you some value from doing that.\u00a0 If you feel like it\u2019s not creating value, stop doing it because chances are it\u2019s not creating value.\u00a0 You can refactor your code and structure your code in such a way that it makes it easier to write unit tests.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written up on my blog about \u2026 there are only 2 roles of code.\u00a0 If you do a search for 2 roles of code, you will find my post.\u00a0 Basically, I say that there are algorithms and then there\u2019s a code that ties everything together.\u00a0 If you can separate your code out better into those 2 types and don\u2019t have it mixed together in classes, then you can write unit tests or you can do test driven development on the algorithm part and not have a lot of dependencies, not have to use a lot of mocks.\u00a0 Those tests are going to be highly valuable and it\u2019s just going to be really beneficial to you.<\/p>\n

If you have everything mixed together and you\u2019re finding that you\u2019re having to write a lot of mocks and you find that your test code is really complicated, then you might really want to question the value of doing test driven development in that case.<\/p>\n

Overall, with my view, I think test driven development is good.\u00a0 It\u2019s really, really good for beginners.\u00a0 If you\u2019re starting out you need to start practicing this in order to become better at development.\u00a0 As you get more experience, you have to use your common sense.\u00a0 You have to be pragmatic about it.\u00a0 If you feel like the tests aren\u2019t adding value or they\u2019re just wasting time, then that might be true.<\/p>\n

Well, I hope this video didn\u2019t get you too ticked off.\u00a0 I definitely have a different view on test driven development than I did earlier in my career.\u00a0 Like I said, this comes from my experience.\u00a0 If you disagree with me, let me know.\u00a0 Send me a comment down below or send me an e-mail.\u00a0 Don\u2019t forget to subscribe to this channel and I hope you have a good week, and I will talk to you again next time.\u00a0 See you later.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to be a huge supporter of TDD, but lately, I’ve become much more pragmatic about it. In this video, I discuss test driven development and what my current views on it are. [responsive_video]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wryn6vFwqn8[\/responsive_video] [blank_space height=’3em’] Full transcript: John:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hey, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com.\u00a0 This week, I want to talk about, yes, a technical…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[162229169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-youtube"],"yoast_head":"\nMy Views On Test Driven Development - Simple Programmer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I used to be a huge supporter of TDD, but lately, I've become much more pragmatic about it. 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