Importance of Treating Unit Tests as First Class Code

On my previous project, we had a rather large set of unit tests. This collection of tests grew over time and we neglected to maintain them with the fervency in which we maintained our production code. This quickly came back to haunt us.

Making sweeping changes to our codebase became painful because our tests were too difficult to modify. Our test project was weighing us down with code debt.

Always remember that you are only as agile as the weakest code in your codebase. You must maintain your tests as if they were just as important as your production code…because they are!

We remedied the problem by refactoring our test project extensively, but we should not have had to do so. If only we had been diligent in keeping that codebase well designed and clean from the start… Don’t make the same mistake.

-=CE=-

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