Anyone know about unit testing?
Yes?

Well on a recent project for an insurance company I was pulled into a meeting for another project. Apparently I was stopping the project from progressing because I'd 'broken the build'. Being totally mystified I asked for clarification. Turns out my unit tests were failing in the core project due to changes they'd made to it.

I laughed. I shouldn't have, but I did. I pointed out that, if you change it then the tests have to change. That they are broken is good and indicates a degree of coverage and protection. Fixing them should be trivial and you can carry on. I said this to a room of seasoned contractors, all highly paid and well thought of. Not a single one knew what I was talking about. This is the programming equivalent of 'What you learn first', the abc, the 101. Now I was worried.

In the end we agreed to disagree and they simple stopped using the build system. Deploying straight to the server is much faster apparently...and definitely didn't cause them to fail hard.

Pointing this to senior management didn't endear me to them either.
(skgorsky, Mon 27 Feb 2012, 16:01, 2 replies)

I'm a coder.
Someone said to me the other day "Hi Gormo, can you have a look at this? Oh, ignore all that, I've been copying code I don't understand".

I died a little inside.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Mon 27 Feb 2012, 16:10, closed)

It *is* something you learn early on, in a formal learning structure. Many programmers these days are self taught and, though they are good developers, may never have been exposed to something like this.
(tyrellsOwl, Mon 27 Feb 2012, 17:48, closed)