| "It's never good to be dogmatic." In some situations unit tests can be very effective and useful, such as in testing complex algorithms, or in code bases where some serious refactoring is required, and where one don't want to break existing behavior. In backend development, where user facing output is limited, there is typically no other practical way to check that things are working properly. However, in games, and typical front-end development, especially in its early stages, it can be beneficial to be as flexible as possible. And however way you put it, unit tests simply make your code more rigid. In the latter situation, some people prefer guard rails and find that they are more flexible with unit tests in place. Others prefer not to care about unit tests and attain higher productivity without them. Only when an application grows to a certain size where a developer does not naturally inspect typical behavior all day, and if quality is important, it starts to make sense to put in automated testing, because it is simply more cost effective. Similar reasoning goes for dynamic vs static typing. It seems that some people think that everyone should always use the same approach for any kind of software development, because it worked for them at some point in time. Over time I have grown a preference to avoid working with such people. |