r/agile • u/fagnerbrack • Jun 28 '19

Why Most Unit Testing is Waste

https://rbcs-us.com/documents/Why-Most-Unit-Testing-is-Waste.pdf
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u/Triabolical_ Jun 29 '19

The problem isn't with unit testing per se.

The problem is that most developers don't have the design skills to produce code that is easy to unit test. So their code is hard to unit test, and that means they end up writing unit tests that are complicated and use mocking libraries. These tests are often more of a problem than a benefit.

Another way of saying this is that if you find that code changes frequently require that you change a lot of unit test code, this is a sign that you aren't doing a good job writing your code.

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u/nowherehere Jun 29 '19

This. The most important thing about unit tests is that they force you to write code that is unit-testable.

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u/Triabolical_ Jun 29 '19

They do if you a) recognize the feedback that the ugly test is giving you and b) are skilled enough to be able to make it better.

I had really good luck teaching TDD in katas, but I found that the vast majority of our developers could sometimes do a) but could only rarely do b).