It all started with a joke: unit tests are for sore losers — you know, people who can’t write normal code straight away and waste time writing unit tests instead of adding value.
I personally don’t like unit tests and believe they are a waste of time, but how to avoid things blowing up in your face is the million-dollar question.
But jokes aside, jokes convey information amazingly well — they provoke thought and are fun. Bear with me. Below are a few statements that are true and false at the same time (the infamous “it depends”). We’ll get to the nuances in a bit.
Unit tests are a waste of time.
Functional and E2E tests do the same, but better *
Simply put, one E2E test spans multiple units, testing all of them simultaneously.
Unit tests give a false sense of security *
Especially with test coverage metrics, which some people love so much. Does 100% test coverage guarantee absolutely bug-free software? Stay tuned — the truth will shock you.
Programmers cannot test their own software *
I don’t have meaningful statistical evidence, so I’ll leave you with anecdotal evidence, one solid “trust me, bro,” and a challenge.
The challenge
Below is the plus_2(num) function — let’s say it’s JavaScript, for giggles. The function takes the number num and adds 2.
How would you test it? Please think of it before continue.
plus_2(2) === 4
What else?
plus_2(-2) // how do we handle negative numbers
plus_2(0) // zero is always an edge-case
plus_2(0.12345678910111213) // are we losing precision?
plus_2(9_007_199_254_740_991) // how do we handle the overflow
plus_2(NaN)
plus_2(+Infinity)
plus_2(-Infinity)
plus_2(-0) // negative zero, because floating point is such a delight
plus_2(undefined)
plus_2(true)
plus_2(null)
plus_2("5")
plus_2(() => 3)
plus_2(-[]) // in the spirit of WAT??!!!
Okay, I’ll stop here.
A few observations:
You didn’t see it coming, did you?
Extensive testing is exhausting, and this is a stupidly simple function, barely part of any real logic.
Let’s get back to the jokes-not-jokes above.
Wouldn’t it be better to cover less esoteric use cases of this function and many others with E2E?
Even this scale of testing doesn’t guarantee high-quality software. Unit A could be tested, and unit B could be tested, but what about all the combinations of A and B? This is the exact problem with 100% test coverage. Yes, every branch of the program was executed at least once, but there can still be illegal combinations of branches, like race conditions.
Were you able to come up with similar test coverage? Please let me know.
So what? Skip unit tests? You must feel that this logic is flawed.
How to balance? The guiding principle is unfortunately experience. This is why software development that stays within budget and meets milestones and timelines isn’t actually widespread.
Here are a few cases where unit tests are a must:
- To increase quality: Some conditions, like plus_2(NaN), are rare and might never be caught in E2E tests. Without unit tests, things will blow up either in production or during future code changes.
- To test design sanity: The rule of thumb is, if you’re struggling to write a unit test suite for a unit (e.g., a class), the unit might not be self-sufficient — it may just be a part of a larger whole.
- To speed up the QA process: Large caliber tests can show that something is wrong, but unit tests can help pinpoint the exact issue.
- To save lives: medical equipment, critical infrastructure, automotive or aviation — I don’t even…
- Everyday use: Just ask ChatGPT/Copilot/your LLM of choice to create unit tests. They do a decent job most of the time.
By the way, programmers who can test are usually not only programmers. Their additional experience as QA, business analysts, DevOps, support engineers, or in other roles gives them a broader perspective on their software, helping them break away from biases.
TL;DR
Unit tests are costly: Writing them properly takes time and effort.
Functional and E2E tests lack depth: They don’t provide comprehensive coverage.
This article is a meta-joke about QA humor and developer biases.
That’s it. Happy coding, and may your software be bug-free!
