Testing

In Part 1 of this blog series, we started looking at how we can use mocking to improve our unit tests. We'll expand on that in this post.

We've written in the past about the importance of unit tests and how to write better ones: Culture of Unit Testing, Subtests are the Best.

Above: Caktus uses several mobile devices for accessibility testing. For a more realistic experience, it’s important to test on devices, and not just with simulators.

At Caktus, we work on many projects, some of which are built by us from start to finish, while others are inherited from other sources. Oftentimes, we pick up a project that we either have not worked on in a long time, or haven’t worked on at all, so we have to get familiar with the code and figure out the design decisions that were made by those who developed it (including when the developers are younger versions of ourselves). Moreover, it is a good idea to improve the setup process in each project, so others can have an easier time getting set up in the future. In our efforts to work on such projects, a few things have been helpful both for becoming familiar with the projects more quickly, and for making the same projects easier to pick up in the future.

Above: The Internet Summit in Raleigh is one of the local conferences we recommend attending. (Photo by Ian Huckabee.)

At Caktus, we strongly believe in professional development and continued learning. We encourage our talented team to stay up to date with industry trends and technologies. During 2018, Cakti attended a number of conferences around the country. Below is a list (in alphabetical order) of the ones we found the most helpful, practical, and interesting. We look forward to attending these conferences again, and if you get the chance, we highly recommend that you check them out as well.

You may look at my job title (or picture) and think, “Oh, this is easy, he’s going to resolve to stand up at his desk more.” Well, you’re not wrong, that is one of my resolutions, but I have an even more important one. I, Jeremy Gibson, resolve to do less work in 2019. You’re probably thinking that it’s bold to admit this on my employer’s blog. Again, you’re not wrong, but I think I can convince them that the less work I do, the more clear and functional my code will become. My resolution has three components.

Forms are something that I find myself testing frequently, whether it’s an e-commerce checkout page or a new model in the Django admin. The challenge of forms is that users will often enter things that may not have been accounted for when the form was created.

Unit testing is something that deeply divides programmer communities. Nearly everyone agrees that it’s good to have unit tests in place, but some developers question whether the time invested in writing unit tests would be better spent writing “real” code, doing manual QA, or debugging.

Subtests are the best

Testing our code is important. Because developers write bugs, it’s valuable to catch and correct them before the code gets to production so our apps work as they should. Specifically, we want tests that are DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself), thorough, and readable. Though there are many ways to try to accomplish these goals, subtests make each of them easier. If you’re not using subtests in your test classes, you probably should be.

I Am Not Perfect.

I've been programming professionally for 25 years, and the most important thing I have learned is this: