Test & Code

218: Balancing test coverage with test costs - Nicole Tietz-Sokolskaya


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Nicole is a software engineer and writer, and recently wrote about the trade-offs we make when deciding which tests to write and how much testing is enough.

We talk about:

  • Balancing schedule vs testing
  • How much testing is the right about of testing
  • Should code coverage be measured and tracked
  • Good refactoring can reduce code coverage
  • Is it worth testing error conditions?
  • Are rare error codes ok to just monitor?
  • API drift and autospec
  • Mitigating risk
  • Deciding what to test and what not to test
  • Focus testing on key money-making features 
  • If there's a bug in this part of the code, how much business impact is there?
  • Performance testing needs to approximately match real world workloads
  • Cost of a service breaking vs the cost of creating, maintaining, and running tests
  • Keeping test suites quick to minimize getting distracted


Links:

  • Too much of a good thing: the trade-off we make with tests 
  • Load testing is hard, and the tools are... not great. But why?
  • Yet Another Rust Resource (YARR!)
  • Goodhart's law - "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"



...more
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