The Pyramid of Unit Testing Benefits - Gergely Orosz

This resource first appeared in issue #18 on 03 Apr 2020 and has tags Technical Leadership: Software Development, Technical Leadership: CI/CD

The Pyramid of Unit Testing Benefits - Gergely Orosz

Unit testing is increasingly accepted in research computing that it doesn’t really need justification, but when people talk about it’s benefit, it’s usually about fairly low-level benefits - CI/CD and avoiding regressions. But there’s an entire pyramid of benefits:

• Validate your work.
• Separate concerns in your code.
• An always up-to-date documentation.
• Fewer regressions.
• A safety net for refactoring.

Advantages like documentation, and the need to separate concerns in the code to the point that unit testing makes sense, and future architectural benefits like being able to refactor more smoothly, are under-appreciated!