It took me a really long time to grasp how I should do unit tests. I finally understood them as a mean of testing that I'm writing the correct code, and not testing that the code is returning the correct result. The latter is done by integration tests.
I learned it the hard way: I worked at a startup that had 0 automated tests and saw its products fail on production. Then I started looking for how I should do automated tests. The easiest ones seemed integration tests, as they test that the result of the code is correct, plus I didn't have to worry about this weird thing called Mocking. Then, my integration tests grew bigger and bigger, and started taking more and more minutes to finish running. And they failed randomly.
Today, I am going through a refactoring process and writing unit tests now that I have experienced all this first-hand - and for the last few days, I have already caught a lot of hidden semantic bugs here and there (even typos!). It all really became easier when I understood how mocks work.
To recap:
Unit tests are to assert that I've written the correct code. These run very fast as all potentially slow external dependencies are mocked.
Integration tests are to assert that this correct code, glued together with the external dependencies, is returning the correct outcome to the requester.
That's my opinion!
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
It took me a really long time to grasp how I should do unit tests. I finally understood them as a mean of testing that I'm writing the correct code, and not testing that the code is returning the correct result. The latter is done by integration tests.
I learned it the hard way: I worked at a startup that had 0 automated tests and saw its products fail on production. Then I started looking for how I should do automated tests. The easiest ones seemed integration tests, as they test that the result of the code is correct, plus I didn't have to worry about this weird thing called Mocking. Then, my integration tests grew bigger and bigger, and started taking more and more minutes to finish running. And they failed randomly.
Today, I am going through a refactoring process and writing unit tests now that I have experienced all this first-hand - and for the last few days, I have already caught a lot of hidden semantic bugs here and there (even typos!). It all really became easier when I understood how mocks work.
To recap:
That's my opinion!