A plea to do testing:
It took about five years until I understood how testing works (for me). And I can’t imagine doing any programming without anymore. My key to success with testing was to not see it as something I do in addition to my code but just as part of it. I write tests first because I first wanna define how my not yet written code can be used. If it is hard to think about a simple test for a new function, I first refactor my existing code thus I can come up with a simple test. Because if it’s hard to write a test for something, most likely that stuff will be hard to understand and use for other programmers (or myself in the future).
So, the key point here is, not even think about how I will implement the function before I have a definition of how to use it then. For example, if I have in mind that I will use a struct for something, tests often drive me to use a simple list.
When I have to continue on the code I haven’t touched for a while, I first run
mix test --trace --seed=0 and immediately have a specification of the status quo.
When I look out for something on Github, I first read the tests to understand how I can use and eventually change/extend that code. If there are no tests, or in case I can’t understand the tests, I skip that repository.
Other than that, of course, I feel so comfortable when there is a trustworthy test suite if it comes to refactoring existing code.
I gave up arguing about TDD, I just do it and enjoy a much stressless life.
