|
I have projects where I can't manage to get any kind of automated tests in, because it's just too hard to figure out how to do it, way too time consuming. And indeed they don't have tests. I have other projects where I manage to get good automated test coverage. Having this experience, I know for sure which projects are more enjoyable to work on,of a higher quality, with fewer bugs, better architecture and more developer productivity -- the well-tested ones every time. If you write tests from the start, it tends to effect the architecture of the project -- creating a testable architecture, but also generally a better more maintainable architecture. So the projects where testing is 'too expensive' are often those that were started without tests. Also, certainly, some environments/frameworks/platforms support testing better than others. And I think it's true that some domains are better suited for testing than others -- sadly, in my experience, typical web apps are actually among the hardest things to test well. I have sympathy for not having figured out how to test in an economical and maintainble way. Sometimes that's me. But at this point I am confident from my own experience, that when I can figure out how to test in an economical and maintainable way, it leads to better software and less frustration. (I suppose there could be a correlation fallacy here, where the 'less problematic' (in some ways) projects are the ones I manage to test on, and it's because they are 'less problematic' that they are higher quality, not because they are tested. All I can say is my experience leads me to believe in tests, even though I still don't use them in every project, because in some projects I can't figure out how to do so economically.) |