[seanhunter]

Making the smallest test case that reproduces some bug is hugely valuable when debugging complex systems, especially if you have a wierd heisenbug that is hard to manifest reliably. Having a small reproducible case massively narrows the scope of the search for the bug.

Similarly, narrowing test cases to the smallest case that reproduces a particular behaviour so you're only actually testing a very targeted thing will make the test suite faster and also make it easier to fix tests which break because they exercise a very narrow path.