Unit Testing Principles, Practices, and Patterns

Chapter 1. The goal of unit testing

This chapter covers

• The state of unit testing
• The goal of unit testing
• Consequences of having a bad test suite
• Using coverage metrics to measure test suite quality
• Attributes of a successful test suite

Learning unit testing doesn’t stop at mastering the technical bits of it, such as your favorite test framework, mocking library, and so on. There’s much more to unit testing than the act of writing tests. You always have to strive to achieve the best return on the time you invest in unit testing, minimizing the effort you put into tests and maximizing the benefits they provide. Achieving both things isn’t an easy task.

It’s fascinating to watch projects that have achieved this balance: they grow effortlessly, ...