The Ecstasy of Testing

 

describe("The ecstasy of testing", function() {

You dive in, equipped with nothing more than a creeping dissatisfaction and a passing test suite.

As the darkness of uncertainty begins to envelop you, the shining green light of your passing suite fills you with unbounded confidence. Fearlessly, you make your first refactor. Vast swaths of code fall away before you, subjected to the annals of git history. Intricate towers of loosely coupled components assemble themselves upon the foundations of your assumptions and beliefs.

In your gut, you feel that it’s ready. You hit save. Your waiting tests eagerly devour your creation, but something is wrong. The suite is failing. Exceptions smoulder red with roars of unmet assertions. You realize that you've missed an entire set of edge cases. Your assumptions were unfounded, and were it not for the meticulous diligence of your test suite, devastating. Cries of what could have been are drowned out by a torrent of mechanical clicks and clacks as your fingers deftly recover from your oversight.

Once again you set the suite into motion. Between the hushed sounds of your bated breath you can nearly hear the whirring cogs of your test harness as it churns through vast permutations of possibilities and potentialities. Finally, the gears come to rest.

The screen glows green in front of you.

Your tests are passing.

It's finished.

});