Effective Unit Testing

2.4. Independent tests run easily in solitude

There’s a lot to be said about tests, what they should or shouldn’t contain, what they should or shouldn’t specify, and how they should be structured in the name of readability. What goes on around tests sometimes plays an equally vital role.

Human beings—our brains to be more exact—are enormously powerful information processors. We can make seemingly instant evaluations of what’s going on in our physical surroundings and react in a blink. We dodge that incoming snowball before we even realize what we’re reacting to. These reactions are in our DNA. They’re behavioral recipes that instruct our body to move when our senses observe a familiar pattern. Over time our cookbook of these recipes grows in ...