this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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Possibly stupid question: is automated testing actually a common practice? (self.ask_experienced_devs)
submitted 6 months ago by yournameplease to c/ask_experienced_devs
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Referring more to smaller places like my own - few hundred employees with ~20 person IT team (~10 developers).

I read enough about testing that it seems industry standard. But whenever I talk to coworkers and my EM, it's generally, "That would be nice, but it's not practical for our size and the business would allow us to slow down for that." We have ~5 manual testers, so things aren't considered "untested", but issues still frequently slip through. It's insurance software so at least bugs aren't killing people, but our quality still freaks me out a bit.

I try to write automated tests for my own code, since it seems valuable, but I avoid it whenever it's not straightforward. I've read books on testing, but they generally feel like either toy examples or far more effort than my company would be willing to spend. Over time I'm wondering if I'm just overly idealistic, and automated testing is more of a FAANG / bigger company thing.

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[โ€“] 0x0 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I wish. Most companies i've worked at i was maintaining monolithic legacy code that's hard to test properly. Sometimes another team was developing the next best thing under management guidance (so it would become the next monolithic legacy code) but usually no.

I've only worked at one company that did TDD and things were smooth.

As usual, management only sees short-term and it's hard to impress on them that any time lost now by implementing proper testing will be gained in the long run.

[โ€“] yournameplease 2 points 6 months ago

another team was developing the next best thing under management guidance (so it would become the next monolithic legacy code)

Pretty much what my team is doing. No need to spend time improving the old system when this one will replace it so soon, right? (And no, we will not actually replace anything anytime soon.)