Code Craft

Choosing Unit Test Cases

If testing is essential but exhaustive testing is impossible, you must judiciously choose the set of most effective tests. To do this, you need a thoughtful and methodical plan. You could take a scattergun approach—just prop the code up on a wall and then fire everything that comes to hand at it. . . .

That way you might find some flaws. But without a sensible, staged testing approach, you’ll never have the quality tests that will give you proper confidence in your code. Instead of the scattergun, you should pick up a rifle with an accurate sight and aim careful shots at the code, hitting well-judged marks, to see how well ...