1. Reduce the Number of Bugs
Taking care of bugs is not only tedious and time-consuming, but issues that appear in production are much more complex than if they had have been discovered in development or staging. By adding unit tests, failures can be detected early on, pretty much as soon as the code is written and the team would be able to take care of any unintended defect without any complications.
2. Improve Code Design
When you consider implementing unit testing, you have to make sure that your code is testable. Think about it, when you deal with the overall design concept, and you need break down the high-level design to ‘single entity-multiple components’, you’ll be forced to think of each unit and make sure each of them is testable. This improves the overall code design by clear unit separation, defining better unit interfaces and the design concept.
3. Improves Teamwork
Along with the documentation, it improves teamwork. Your colleagues can review the logic behind your code and coordinate their code accordingly. Being able to review each other’s code, the teamwork is more cohesive and Agile.
4. Inspires Confidence
You develop software and then you write tests to examine if it works. You will be able to validate in the early stages whether your code is actually functional. Once your tests are passed, you feel confident knowing that your software is in good shape. Many issues could be avoided this way - not everything.
5. Easier Changes and Refactoring of Code
Automated unit tests catches bugs easily and knowing that makes you feel more confident. Once an issue is detected, you feel more at ease when you have to make changes to your code, even if the changes are beyond trivial ones – any code issue detected before it’s released to production is a victory!
We as developers hesitate to add unit testing to our work routine. Some refuse to do so because writing extra code adds more time and effort to an already busy day. What is often not considered is that going the extra mile may save time in the long run. Eliminating unit testing is only time-saving if your code is going to work bug free.
Disclaimer : The views and opinions expressed in the article belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author's employer, organisation, committee or other group or individual.
All fields are mandatory. Your email id won't be published!