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Comment by collyw | Hacker News Reader

> Generally if you are feeling that "unit testing sucks" or "mockito sucks" it's often that case that you're not doing it the right way.

Well explain further. I hate these smart arse sounding comments - "you are doing it wrong" without any indication why, or how to do it better.

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My sense is that one should make the unit tests to be as resilient as possible to refactoring and changes. This means that for so long as the public behavior of the class does not change, one should not need to do much if any updates to the tests.

Thus any test that is written in such a way that it would be present an issue in refactoring code should be avoided if at all possible. A simple example is directly constructing the class under test in the test method:

  @Test 
  public void tryToAvoidDoingThis() {
     MyClass = new MyClass(param1, param2);
     // do stuff to my class
   }

If this is done for each test method, when the constructor parameters change, e.g. a new one is added, then each of the constructors calls in the test method(s) will have to be updated.

Instead, have a level of indirection and have a single method that can create a sample MyClass. Now when the parameters change, only one construction site has to be updated.

In general, unit tests should not be testing specific / internal implementation details of the class. Rather, the tests should verify the documented public behavior of the class.

That's the crux of good tests. That they test the unchanging interface between parts of code, without enforcing no change in implementation.

Interestingly it's also the crux of good design. Breaking code up into composeable pieces that aren't braided together.

There's an inconsistency here: unit tests should depend only on the public behavior of a class; the constructor is public; constructor calls should nevertheless be avoided where possible.

Factoring out a common constructor in tests is an example of making the tests resilient against changes in the underlying code. If the constructor changes, the tests need to be fixed in one place, not in 50.

Other examples may be around a `setup` method. If the method is private, don't test it. Then you can refactor freely. If it's public, test the pre/post conditions around the method in as few places as possible (hopefully one). Even if other tests rely on the object having been "setup", just trust that it works. If the specification of `setup` changes, you just have the `setup` tests to update, not the entire object.

Like all process you have to do what works for you. First, to steal from the recent airbnb article, the bar for testing has to be so low you trip over it. The testing framework should make it easy to get down to writing tests.

Second, start writing tests to verify bug reports and then fix the bug. In large systems I find this critical to honing in on the exact problem. The mental exercise of crafting the test to trigger the bug helps me really understand the problem.

Finally, start new features by first writing a test to simply drive your new codes golden path. When working in a large system I find writing a test to run my new code a much faster development turn around time than rebooting the entire system. This is compounded when there are many systems or moving parts which is common today.

I love TDD, but that's classic No True Scotsman.

> Well explain further. I hate these smart arse sounding comments - "you are doing it wrong" without any indication why, or how to do it better.

With unit tests, there are certain things that must be tested, such as very high-value code contracts, and the like. There are many things that people test (like "correct output" for the input) which may not be so valuable, particularly if several possible values may be correct.

So test contracts, not internals, and not representation. And please for the heaven's sake, don't test the behavior of your dependencies.

Same here.

Unfortunately I also believe those comments are generally true, and I also believe when the posters answer "why", they will give you an answer that is also doing it the wrong way.

I have no idea how to do unit testing. I only believe there is a right way.

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