Re:Is it a Good Idea to Write Tests for Legacy Code?
by frownie on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @06:48AM
(#6767495)
I definitely concur with this. Acceptance tests are really powerful as they somewhat "imply" unit tests. Using your gut-feeling to write them makes the process less brute force than "proper unit testing"
Re:Is it a Good Idea to Write Tests for Legacy Code?
by ollysb on Wednesday November 20, 2013 @09:07AM
(#6768003)
As projects get older I find that the acceptance tests are the part that change the least. Lower level there's always a degree of churn as you refactor out duplication, consolidate interfaces etc. and the tests have to be rewritten as you go. A good solid set of acceptance tests means you can refactor away without having to worry about breaking the site.
I had an e-commerce system from a long time ago that was developed pre-TDD mania. My post-TDD approach was to develop a suite of acceptance tests for it testing a wide variety of typical use cases (add to cart, use discount codes, check out, tax treatments for various countries, etc.) and this has since saved my ass in a variety of ways without needing to go right down to the unit testing level.
(As an aside, if you're working on a project, need to move super fast and simply feel you haven't the time to do "proper" testing, be sure to do some high level acceptance tests at the least. They will save you time because when the inevitable problems occur, you can just code the process to run automatically rather than be clicking 101 times in the 23rd hour of that 24 hour hackathon ;-))