Every serious software development company is considering writing tests a priority. And they realize tests are increasing their development speed. However, many projects are still trying to get away from writing tests.
Why is that?
Usually, it has more to do with inexperienced (or plain bad) management than with developers.
Management vs. Tests
If management is inexperienced and they don’t know the difference between a project with tests vs. no tests – they will assume a project will be faster without tests.
This is, of course, completely wrong.
It might be true for the first month on a brand new project you start from scratch. But after that, either your manual checks get progressively longer and harder – or the number of bugs is slowly starting to explode.
Either one of those is slowing down the project many times over than writing tests would ever do.
Plus, you still have buggy behavior.
Why Developers Accept This?
Experienced developers will never consent to this.
But junior developers really don’t know any better. And if you put them under bad management, they will think this is normal.
When it really isn’t.
Senior developers already worked on many projects and just know that project without tests is a complete disaster.
Code Changes
If your project has tests included, you can be much more confident around making changes to your project.
Which actually makes you faster!
For example, let’s say you’re developing API backend. You can make changes in your business logic and if all the tests for other API endpoints are successfully passed – you know you didn’t break anything.
Compare that to making a simple change and then trying to test 100+ endpoints manually.
Or even worse, not testing at all and hoping for the best.
Onboarding New Developers
New people who come to the project can be productive much sooner if your project contains tests.
They can make changes and if they break anything major that may affect different part of the system – tests will immediately tell them.
Overall, a developer that writes tests is much more productive and valuable developer.
And better paid as well.
So make sure you write your tests.
P.S. -> read this article if you want to double your salary