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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

I don't get the "don't aim for 100%" point. What are you aiming for then? 50%? What happens when you reach 50% and remove some code - do you remove enough tests to match the ratio?

We may just phrase the same idea in 2 different ways, but I'd go with "don't force yourself to do 100% coverage if it's not that relevant" / "don't add a test for a simple getter if you have more important things to do". If you can do 100% and have time for it - you should definitely do that. For example in case someone rewrites your getter, but it's not that simple anymore.

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I don't get the "don't aim for 100%" point

For me the point of that one is that test coverage isn't the goal - good code is.

I've seen folk disappearing down a rabbit hole focusing on getting that last 2% of branch coverage using some baroque mock object monkey patched into the system. Their focus was on test coverage. What people who focus on test coverage get is an evil complex test suite that's very brittle in the face of change.

Other, smarter, folk go "damn - I can't test that easily - this code sucks", factor out unrelated functionality into appropriate classes, add some code that makes some duplication between branches obvious, factor out the duplication and end up with something that's better code, with simpler tests - and better test coverage too. Their focus is on the code - not the test coverage.

[Edited for... erm... English]

Aiming for any specific ratio is missing the point. I think the only rule worth following once you're testing at all is never make it worse unless you understand why you are doing so.

If I had time for useless busywork at my job, I would get a new job rather than do the useless busywork.

As a counter-argument to the "don't aim for 100%" thing, I would say that code coverage is more important in interpreted (and loosely typed) languages. Particularly with preventing regressions. For example, if you change the arity of a function, it's nice to be able to run the tests and see all the calls to it that break.

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