EMx 030: Writing Great Unit Tests with Devon Estes

Panel: - Josh Adams- Charles Max Wood- Mark Ericksen Special Guest: Devon Estes In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with https://twitter.com/devoncestes?lang=en who is a software developer who uses Elixir. He currently resides in Berlin, Germany and has been working there for the past four years. The panelists and the guest talk about https://elixir-lang.org, testing, and much more! Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – https://devchat.tv/get-a-coder-job/  0:49 – Chuck: I am starting a new show called http://thedevrev.com. Check it out http://thedevrev.com Our special guest today is Devon Estes. https://devchat.tv/elixir-mix/emx-018-devon-estes-all-in-on-elixir/ is a past episode you’ve been on – check it out https://devchat.tv/elixir-mix/emx-018-devon-estes-all-in-on-elixir/ 1:26 – Devon: I am American but live in Berlin, Germany for about 4 years now. I was a freelancer, but now I am at a “real” job now where I am a software developer using https://elixir-lang.org 1:50 – Chuck: Cool! 2:05 – Guest: Something to always talk about testing – it’s evergreen! 2:15 – Chuck: What are the benefits you get from testing and what is your approach? 2:24 – The guest answers the question. 3:53 – Panelist chimes in. 4:18 – Panel: I like playing around and I know when something is terrible. I have to poke around to figure out if I like it or not. I am an exploratory developer. I write a test and it looks great at first but the implementation is terrible or something. 5:54 – Mark comments on developers and how they interact with their code. 7:15 – Mark: How do you approach that? I heard you talking about tests, spikes and other things. 7:22 – Guest: If it is something that is small I will write the test first. If it’s larger I will usually do 2-3 spikes to figure out what is going on. The guest continues with this topic. 8:54 – Panel: I found that over the years I couldn’t do that. 9:21 – Guest: With the topic of testing inhttps://elixir-lang.org I have these “rules” but I break them all the time. Sometimes you get better, cleaner tests out of it if you were to break the rule(s.). Tests are only there for 90% of the time, in my own opinion. Sometimes you have to play around to see what’s going on. 10:36 – Panel: I agree a lot, especially with integrations. 10:49 – Guest. 12:18 – Panel: You have these guidelines or rules and you know when to break those rules. You talked about these specific rules and I thought it was interesting. I was reading through these and I have the same rules but you codified them with examples. Can you walk us through your guidelines? 13:00 – Guest: To be super clear I am talking about unit tests. When I think of testing there is this testing pyramid. 13:52 – Panel. 14:57 – Guest: Like I said, these rules are meant to be broken, if appropriate. 16:39 – Guest continues with unit testing and other types of testing. He talks about easier to more difficult kinds of tests. 17:42 – Guest (continues): Sometimes the tests are accurately true, and sometimes not. It can be easy to get into those traps. Hopefully they will tell you what is expected. 18:25 – Panel: In Ruby, there is a test that would modify your code and remove stuff? Was it Mutant? https://github.com/topics/mutation-testing 19:03 – Guest answers the...