testing 1,2,3
I now understand why writing functional tests or unit test for code is so important. I have taken a course that included some test-driven development and assignments that required unit tests. Intellectually I have understood the value of these tests, but I never really saw the full benefits of writing tests (although I’m sure I still don’t fully understand).
This week at work one of my big tasks was to write tests for a library that had been written previously and is now being used in a system my team is developing. In writing these tests, I have been able to learn several things about the library:
- How the code works, and what it is supposed to do
- The database that the code was written for is not the same one we are using
- The library was missing several key functions
If I hadn’t written test for this library, I would still have been in the dark about how it was doing what it was doing (even though I had written a web service that called all the library functions). I definitely wouldn’t have realized that it was missing features, and I definitely wouldn’t have known why it wouldn’t have worked with our current database. So, I saved myself and my team plenty of head scratching by writing tests. Who would have thought test would save time?