After careful thought (and experience born out of his projects) about software and unit testing, one of my coworkers (Mike Buksas) wrote some "disorganized thoughts" about unit testing. I thought they were worth sharing here:
Postulate One: Tests suffer from the same, or complimentary, defects as the code they test.
Postulate Two: Stubborn determination to do the right thing badly is not a virtue.
Postulate Three: Bad code needs more tests, and needs tests more, to attain the same level of confidence.
Conclusion One: Bad tests impede refactoring, making the code harder to improve.
Conclusion Two: Testing makes bad code more correct, but less maintainable.
Postulate Four: Code must change over time, and bad code is harder to change correctly.
Conclusion Three: Determined testing can make bad code worse over time, or at least, less better than it could be.
from Local Extrema: Disorganized Thoughts On Unit Testing Software
I do not know about you but this sorta reflection causes me to think more about how we write unit tests and to strive to do a better job for other's sake.
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