Code Smell 52 — Fragile Tests
Tests are our safety nets. If we don’t trust on their integrity we will be in great danger.
Published in
2 min readJan 4, 2021
Problems
- Determinism
- Confidence loss
- Wasted time
Solutions
- Test should be in full control. There should be no space for erratic behavior and degrees of freedom.
- Remove all tests coupling.
Examples
Fragile, Intermittent, Sporadic or Erratic tests are common in many organizations.
Nevertheless, they mine the developers trust.
We must avoid them.
Sample Code
Wrong
Right
Detection
Detection can be done with test run statistics.
It is very hard to put some test in maintenance since we are removing a safety net.
More Info
Tags
- Coupling
- Determinism
Conclusion
Fragile tests show system coupling and not deterministic or erratic behavior.
Developers spend lots of time and effort fighting against this false positives.
The amateur software engineer is always in search of magic.
Grady Booch
This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.
