Re:Kent Beck: “I get paid for code that works, not for tests...
by Alex3917 on Thursday December 08, 2016 @10:56AM
(#13131091)
Right, I meant that in the context of things that tests are designed to catch. E.g. almost no one writes tests to look for unsafe eval or whatever.
A good example is that I care a lot about making sure our search endpoint doesn't return private user data. But beyond that, I'd rather just know that the endpoint returns a 200 and let someone tell us if it's broken rather than have an extra three hundred lines of code to see if it's returning the correct results. If we get a ton of users then that will probably change, but for now the cost of writing and maintaining those extra tests wouldn't be worth the benefit.
A good example is that I care a lot about making sure our search endpoint doesn't return private user data. But beyond that, I'd rather just know that the endpoint returns a 200 and let someone tell us if it's broken rather than have an extra three hundred lines of code to see if it's returning the correct results. If we get a ton of users then that will probably change, but for now the cost of writing and maintaining those extra tests wouldn't be worth the benefit.