Automated Tests in to automated Builds! How to put the right type of automated tests in to the right automated builds.
Speaker: Eric Landes
Twitter: @ericlandes
Blog: http://ericlandes.com/

This was one of the first sessions I attended during CodeStock 2012. Eric’s talk focused mostly on unit testing, and that the lack of proper unit testing can be compared to stealing from an employer. His point was that if you’re not doing proper unit testing then all of the time wasted on fixing issues that could have been detected with unit tests is like stealing money from employer. He makes the assumption that that time spent on fixing these issues could have been better spent developing new features that drive the business.

To a point I can agree with Eric’s argument regarding unit testing and stealing from a company’s perspective. I can see how he relates resources being shifted from new development to bug fixes as stealing based on the fact that the resources used to fix bugs are directly taken from other projects.

He also states that Boring/Redundant and Build/Test tasks should be automated because it reduces the changes of errors and frees up developer to do what they do best, DEVELOP!

When he refers to testing, he breaks testing down in to four distinct types.

• Unit Test
• Acceptance Test (This also includes Integration Tests)
• Performance Test
• UI Test

With this he also recommends that developers should not go buck wild striving for 100% code coverage because some test my not provide a great return on investment. In his experience he recommends that 70% test coverage was a very acceptable rate.