Nice article but touching on testing and saying your not a developer if you don't test is pretty harsh. Many many digital agencies bill per hour and testing is rarely/almost never a factor. The client doesn't care about tests, and certainly don't want to pay for them. Just my 2c. I worked in agencies for a while and have never written a test while with them, likewise as a contractor, most of my clients would never pay for tests so they simply aren't there.
On the flip side if your in a big business then yes, tests are pretty much mandatory, and even in some companies they have dedicated test developers. So it's quite a harsh statement to make saying your not a developer if you don't write tests, you simply aren't accounting for context. The rest of the points are good though 🙂
I agree. Context is critical. In all we do. There are books focused only on this: how we're biased to think in absolute terms when in reality things make sense only within contexts.
This applies to all her points, not just the one regarding testing. (e.g. code reviews are a waste of time if done on trivial code or without the involvement of both parties)
If no one else will defend you, I will. I work in a Korean company where everything is "GO FAST FAST FASTER". At the same time, planning teams don't know what the hell they're doing and don't do prototyping of their UX flow, design is then delayed, features are flung here and there, added, removed, backlogged, the scope constantly changing, and by the time the project is ready to hit the development stage the completion deadline is an hour away.
This is quite similar to how it is in a badly-run agency, and in these situations if you have devs that take pride in their work and manually test edge cases as best as possible while they work, then it can be done without major issues. Of course, testing is the way to go, but there are situations where it just isn't feasible and they would rather finish the project and figure out the bugs as they are reported rather than set up tests that are torn down and redone every other day along the way.
There is also the scenario of rapid iteration in a startup environment where a pivot could mean all your tests need to be redone. In a perfect world, we would all do TDD.
Don't me mean. He has a point. In real life things like budget, time, purpose etc matter (as oppose to the software books and articles suggest we should always write).
Would I skip unit testing for life-critical or mission-critical software? I'd have to be crazy. Would I skip unit testing for my blog UI? Absolutely!
I am a one if those QC testers in a big company. We get testing requirements from developers. If you don't test your software then it really isn't production ready, more like alpha or beta ready.
I didn't missed any point, I asked how can you tell your software is ready with zero testing? How do you make sure you have reliable software? Are your customers your alpha testers, that's a really bad methodology imo, but hey if they're paying cheap I guess is on them anyways.
Most agencies I've worked in have had their own CMS that they've manually tested, which is bad I know, but not my choice. It's reliable because most of the time it's been in production for a while any issues that do crop up were fixed.
Alot of software needs tests, but generally the customers agencies get want a cheap solution. Tests simply aren't budgeted.
I must add, I agree tests should be there, but it's not up to me, or the guy next to me, it's up to the client if they want to pay for the additional time, and 99% of the time that isn't the case. That's what you get when it's cheap, you get a bare minimum to pass as a website.
Bad practises are rife, my problem that I pointed out with this article is that not everything is unit or feature tested, sometimes it's just not feasable because the end client doesn't want to pay and are working on a budget, adding tests to apps costs time and money, which they don't have alot of the time.
You're right, it is on them, I can put an argument for them easily enough, but it's not my money to spend and my boss wouldn't sign off on it because it costs him money.
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Nice article but touching on testing and saying your not a developer if you don't test is pretty harsh. Many many digital agencies bill per hour and testing is rarely/almost never a factor. The client doesn't care about tests, and certainly don't want to pay for them. Just my 2c. I worked in agencies for a while and have never written a test while with them, likewise as a contractor, most of my clients would never pay for tests so they simply aren't there.
On the flip side if your in a big business then yes, tests are pretty much mandatory, and even in some companies they have dedicated test developers. So it's quite a harsh statement to make saying your not a developer if you don't write tests, you simply aren't accounting for context. The rest of the points are good though 🙂
I agree. Context is critical. In all we do. There are books focused only on this: how we're biased to think in absolute terms when in reality things make sense only within contexts.
This applies to all her points, not just the one regarding testing. (e.g. code reviews are a waste of time if done on trivial code or without the involvement of both parties)
If no one else will defend you, I will. I work in a Korean company where everything is "GO FAST FAST FASTER". At the same time, planning teams don't know what the hell they're doing and don't do prototyping of their UX flow, design is then delayed, features are flung here and there, added, removed, backlogged, the scope constantly changing, and by the time the project is ready to hit the development stage the completion deadline is an hour away.
This is quite similar to how it is in a badly-run agency, and in these situations if you have devs that take pride in their work and manually test edge cases as best as possible while they work, then it can be done without major issues. Of course, testing is the way to go, but there are situations where it just isn't feasible and they would rather finish the project and figure out the bugs as they are reported rather than set up tests that are torn down and redone every other day along the way.
There is also the scenario of rapid iteration in a startup environment where a pivot could mean all your tests need to be redone. In a perfect world, we would all do TDD.
I hope I'll never have to maintain any code you, or someone like you, wrote...
Don't me mean. He has a point. In real life things like budget, time, purpose etc matter (as oppose to the software books and articles suggest we should always write).
Would I skip unit testing for life-critical or mission-critical software? I'd have to be crazy. Would I skip unit testing for my blog UI? Absolutely!
Have you ever worked in a digital agency? Do you bill your clients for tests?
I am a one if those QC testers in a big company. We get testing requirements from developers. If you don't test your software then it really isn't production ready, more like alpha or beta ready.
Big company = money to spend. Missing my point entirely about testing when working in digital agencies
I didn't missed any point, I asked how can you tell your software is ready with zero testing? How do you make sure you have reliable software? Are your customers your alpha testers, that's a really bad methodology imo, but hey if they're paying cheap I guess is on them anyways.
Most agencies I've worked in have had their own CMS that they've manually tested, which is bad I know, but not my choice. It's reliable because most of the time it's been in production for a while any issues that do crop up were fixed.
Alot of software needs tests, but generally the customers agencies get want a cheap solution. Tests simply aren't budgeted.
I must add, I agree tests should be there, but it's not up to me, or the guy next to me, it's up to the client if they want to pay for the additional time, and 99% of the time that isn't the case. That's what you get when it's cheap, you get a bare minimum to pass as a website.
Bad practises are rife, my problem that I pointed out with this article is that not everything is unit or feature tested, sometimes it's just not feasable because the end client doesn't want to pay and are working on a budget, adding tests to apps costs time and money, which they don't have alot of the time.
You're right, it is on them, I can put an argument for them easily enough, but it's not my money to spend and my boss wouldn't sign off on it because it costs him money.