Pragmatic Unit Testing in Java 8 with JUnit

Reasons to Write a Unit Test

Pat has just completed work on a small feature change, adding a couple dozen lines to the system. He’s fairly confident in his change, but it’s been a while since he’s tried things out in the deployed system. Pat runs the build script, which packages and deploys the change to the local web server. He pulls up the application in his browser, navigates to the appropriate screen, enters a bit of data, clicks submit, and…stack trace!

Pat stares at the screen for a moment, then the code. Aha! Pat notes that he forgot to initialize a field. He makes the fix, runs the build script again, cranks up the application, enters data, clicks submit, and…hmm, that’s not the right amount. Oops. This time, it takes a bit longer to ...