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Unit testing makes or breaks a software development project. In small scale projects with a short life expectancy, this may not be integral but this is not the case for long-term projects. Maintainability of the source code matters, and testable code equals maintainable code. Unit testing your code will increase the lifespan of your application by several years, and significantly reduces the cost of change.
1. Aim for 85% coverage but never neglect to test all your states.
2. Use code conventions of your test methods. We use Name_Scenario_ExpectedResult(), or Name_Scenario_ExpectedExceptionType(). Using these conventions, you can omit documentation and read from the name what the test is supposed to do, for instance Constructor_NullInput_ThrowsArgumentNullException().
3. Isolate your class completely from external classes through stubbing and proper use of abstraction. When your test fails this may only be because of code in the class itself.
4. For better maintainability standardize variable names for your variables in the test methods: We use target, expected, actual
5. Treat test code like you would treat production code. This means staying DRY and refactoring the code where necessary.
6. Execute your tests before checking in your code. Do not accept any failing tests. If the project is small enough, you can use the gated check-in feature in TFS (or Visual Studio Online) to ensure this.
7. With experienced developers practicing TDD can even contribute to a better technical design.
8. Test only your public methods. Your private methods should automatically be covered by calling your public methods.
9. Place your tests in a location that can be easily tracked or derived from the name of the class under test. We use the following conventions: If we are testing Project.Module.Class, our test class can be found in Project.Module.Tests.ClassTest.
10. A good unit test is fast, repeatable and has a single assert. Another assert is another test.
11. Unit testing is necessary. It takes longer and it gives you as much test code as production code but in the long run, it keeps cost of change low and it gives developers confidence that his/her change does not affect the legacy code. It also increases the lifespan of your application by several years.
Mobile-Friendly Sign UpIt may seem like a small improvement, but displaying the right keyboard to a user can help ease friction on sign up, and make the whole process faster and more pleasant.
Taking Your Craft SeriouslyAlthough it is easily overlooked, being a software engineer comes with a great responsibility. According to Robert C Martin, a regular new car comes with 100 million lines of code, where he jokingly adds ‘written by a 22-year-old at 3 o’clock in the morning’. It scares him, and if you are tech savvy I am sure you share that opinion. Although funny – this is NOT a joke—being a software engineer does put you in situations where you write code at 3 in the morning for a piece of software that affect the lives or at least the livelihood of people.
Vertical Rhythm in Your CSSTypography and typesetting form the foundation by which your whole user interface stand on. For a designer, everything else—color, art direction—is relative to the intention of the product owner. It’s very malleable. The one thing that should be unbendable is the system by which the letters are laid out on the page. If it’s not solidly built, it can grow bloated and unwieldy. Small changes that would usually take less than an hour to apply, would take double—or even triple—the development time. The size of your file can also double than how it normally would be, and that’s not good for performance. On the other hand, if it’s not the code that doesn’t suffer, it’s the legibility that takes a hit. The vertical rhythm gets compromised in ways that can easily tire the eye of the user.
