Tests can run assertions on your code but also reveal important insights about how your application really works.
Automated testing will assuredly go down in the annals of software development history as one of these industry-changing trends. Although few actually fully adhere to TDD discipline (I am in awe of those that do, just to be clear), most developers make sure to prioritize and include testing in their dev cycle. It took some time, but once the benefits of tests finally sunk into the collective developer psyche, tests successfully evolved from a chore, an inevitable victim of procrastination, to an important area of investment in your personal dev cycle.
Deceptively, the phrase ‘automated testing’ includes a wide gamut of testing techniques and methodologies. From unit tests, often just an echo of your coding assumptions, to integration tests, user-acceptable end-to-end testing, load testing, and more. In fact, early on developers were plagued by hard questions with no definitive answers around exactly that topic: ‘how much’ and ‘what’ exactly should be tested. How do you know you’ve tested enough?
