It seems impressive until you realize that it is only useful on a very simple hello world like application.
I have seen again and again yet another vendor trying to sell a magical unit testing tool that will resolve all problems. But in the end they work great for certain nice cases and are very expensive to buy. On top of that they add additional layers of complexity risking to fail to detect other design flaws.
It is tempting to use these tools as a quick win but when you rely on these tools too much you can end up with a project that is doomed from day one.
Sloppy programming, the developer will commit just something and if it turns green then he can go home. If it fails then he randomly changes something until it gets green.
Loss in productivity. You are more busy making the test turn up green than actually invest energy in creating stable code.
Tests that are simple wrong to begin with. You build your code around a test that is faulty.
Unnoticed design flaws that will cost you dearly because you relied on the green status for so long that you never wondered to question if that code is actually good.
2 comments
2 u/roznak 18 Jan 2017 21:13
It seems impressive until you realize that it is only useful on a very simple hello world like application.
I have seen again and again yet another vendor trying to sell a magical unit testing tool that will resolve all problems. But in the end they work great for certain nice cases and are very expensive to buy. On top of that they add additional layers of complexity risking to fail to detect other design flaws.
It is tempting to use these tools as a quick win but when you rely on these tools too much you can end up with a project that is doomed from day one.
2 u/roznak 18 Jan 2017 21:23
The biggest dangers of automated code testing is: