Starting to Unit Test: Not as Hard as You Think

by Erik Dietrich

Unit testing. You've heard the term. Probably a lot. You know you should probably figure out how it works, since everyone's always talking about it and a lot of companies require developers to know it. But you don't really know it and you're worried that you'll look uninformed if you cop to not knowing it. Well, relax. This book assumes you have absolutely no idea how it works and walks you through the practice from the very beginning.You'll learn the basics, but more importantly, you'll learn the business value, the path to walk not to get frustrated, what's testable and what isn't, and, and everything else that a practical unit testing newbie could possibly want to know.

Genres: Programming, Software, Technology, Computer Science

104 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 22, 2014

Reviews

[Lorenzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a nice introduction on how to adopt Unit Tests in your daily work. Useful are the suggestions related on how to deal with legacy code and to introduce Unit Tests in a working environment that does not want to switch mentality. Even if the examples (code snippets) are very simple, you can have a clear idea of the presented concepts. The introduction on Test Doubles is quite superficial.

[Ju Ju Orange · Rating 5 out of 5]

The discussion of the "Advanced Beginner" struck many a chord with me, as did the other real world examples and scenarios. I'd read the Uncle Bob books and watched the Pluralsight videos but this book gave me the final nudge to get stuck in and start doing unit testing. A very worthwhile read, thank you, Erik Dietrich!

[Aidar Samerkhanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a good start point for people who have never heard about unit testing. Simple examples, simple explanation.
For those who have used unit tests already, reading can be boring.

[Luca Bernardi · Rating 5 out of 5]

That's probably one of the best book about testing I've read in a while.

What I really appreciated about the book is that the author is not judgemental, but actually start from a position that if you have ever worked with legacy code you can easily relate.

The book is short but focused with a lot of practical advices. I really appreciated the chapter about how to modify (or not modify) legacy code to make it more testable and in generale make it better code.

[Christopher Pink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written. The only thing I could find at the time to help me wrap my head around unit testing. Highly recommended.