Unit Testing Principles, Practices, and Patterns

Preface

I remember my first project where I tried out unit testing. It went relatively well; but after it was finished, I looked at the tests and thought that a lot of them were a pure waste of time. Most of my unit tests spent a great deal of time setting up expectations and wiring up a complicated web of dependencies—all that, just to check that the three lines of code in my controller were correct. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly was wrong with the tests, but my sense of proportion sent me unambiguous signals that something was off.

Luckily, I didn’t abandon unit testing and continued applying it in subsequent projects. However, disagreement with common (at that time) unit testing practices has been growing in me ever since. Throughout the ...