Re:Unit Testing is Overrated (2020)
by larkost on Thursday April 07, 2022 @07:23PM
(#30951532)
I will counter that integration tests tend to have a much bigger footprint: one test covers a lot more ground and so per line of code will catch more things.
But, the failures from integration tests are often a lot harder to read. Even half-good unit tests tend to show exactly where the error is, and make the fix cycle much shorter. It is also much harder to write exhaustive integration tests for all of the inputs that might happen.
I, as a long-term qa-ish person (I usually write testing systems) see real value in having a mixture of both system, integration (multiple systems), and unit tests, as well as end-to-end manual tests. Anything big enough needs all of these.
Re:Unit Testing is Overrated (2020)
by oxff on Saturday April 09, 2022 @02:46AM
(#30965755)
If errors from your integration tests are hard to understand, that just means you need to improve the debugging information emitted by your software such that your developer can debug it properly using it, no?
But, the failures from integration tests are often a lot harder to read. Even half-good unit tests tend to show exactly where the error is, and make the fix cycle much shorter. It is also much harder to write exhaustive integration tests for all of the inputs that might happen.
I, as a long-term qa-ish person (I usually write testing systems) see real value in having a mixture of both system, integration (multiple systems), and unit tests, as well as end-to-end manual tests. Anything big enough needs all of these.