Unit testing is a popular approach for testing software, but mostly for the wrong reasons. It’s often touted as an effective way for developers to test their code while also enforcing best design practices, however many find it encumbering and superficial.It’s important to understand that development testing does not equate to unit testing. The primary goal is not to write tests which are as isolated as possible, but rather to gain confidence that the code works according to its functional requirements. And there are better ways to achieve that.Writing high-level tests that are driven by user behavior will provide you with much higher return on investment in the long run, and it isn’t as hard as it seems. Find an approach that makes the most sense for your project and stick to it.Here are the main insights:Think critically and challenge best practicesDon’t rely on the test pyramidSeparate tests by functionality, rather than by classes, modules, or scopeAim for the highest level of int…
I. 4 fundamental ideas that we need in order to design data-intensive applications.Reliable, scalable, maintainable applications.Reliability means continuing to work correctly, even when things go wrong. Common faults and preventions include:Hardware faults: hard disks crash, blackout, incorrect network configuration,…Add redundancy to individual hardware components to reduce the failure rate.As long as we can restore a backup onto a new machine quickly, the downtime is not fatal.Software faults: bug, out of shared resources, unresponsive service, cascading failure,…There’s no quick solution other than thorough testing, measuring, monitoring, analyzing.Human errors: design error, configuration error,…Enforce good design, good practice and training.Decouple the places where people make the most mistake.Automate testing: unit test, integration test, end-to-end test.Allow quick recovery rollback strategy.Set up detials monitoringScalability describes a system’s ability to cope with incre…