Chapter 7. The pillars of good tests
This chapter covers
- Writing trustworthy tests
- Writing maintainable tests
- Writing readable tests
- Exploring naming conventions for unit tests
No matter how you organize your tests, or how many you have, they’re worth very little if you can’t trust them, maintain them, or read them. The tests that you write should have three properties that together make them good:
- Trustworthiness— Developers will want to run trustworthy tests, and they’ll accept the test results with confidence. Trustworthy tests don’t have bugs, and they test the right things.
- Maintainability— Nonmaintainable tests are nightmares because they can ruin project schedules, or you risk losing the tests when the project is put on a more aggressive schedule. Developers will simply stop maintaining and fixing tests that take too long to change.
- Readability— This means not just being able to read a test but also figuring out the problem if the test seems to be wrong. Without readability, the other two pillars fall pretty quickly. Maintaining tests becomes harder, and you can’t trust them anymore.
This chapter presents a series of practices related to each of these three pillars that you can use when doing test reviews. Together, the three pillars ensure your time is well used. Drop one of them, and you run the risk of wasting everyone’s time.