Tag: Testing

How to Debug Web API Problems in 4 Steps

e is complicated and many things can go wrong. However, when you add web communications to the mix, a much larger amount of issues can occur beyond compiler and logic errors. his article is a step-by-step diagnostic guide for working through common issues with web services.

Avoiding Quality Minefields

One of the hallmarks that distinguishes a senior developer from a junior developer is the art of planning. I’m not talking resource allocation or scheduling (though those are important). I’m talking about getting a task, sitting down at the keyboard, and explicitly not coding.

Addressing Tech Debt without Killing Quality

So you’re going to start fixing some of your technical debt? Great! Just remember the one cardinal rule: Don’t break the application. Think about it — when we get to take on technical debt the business paying an opportunity cost for us to refactor code instead of making new features or even […]

Mocking Data with Bogus

Ever needed a bunch of random data for testing, UI prototyping, or even as part of an application? I did, and I found a good option to generate it for .NET applications. Bogus is loosely based off of the Faker library for PHP and differs from testing libraries like AutoFixture by […]

How your brain wants to wreck your code

We suck at testing our own code. We suck so badly at it that it has led to entire professions like as Quality Assurance analysts and test engineers. Why is that? How do you take some of the smartest people out there and find some of the most glaring omissions and defects?

Refactoring C# Unit Tests

Unit tests are often treated like second class citizens and not given the same level of polish and refactoring as our production code. As a result, they can wind up brittle, unclear, and hard to maintain. In this article, I’m going to show you a few tricks to keep your […]

Snapshot Testing in JavaScript & .NET

Earlier this year I discovered the fantastic Jest JavaScript unit testing library made by Facebook and commonly associated with React. Jest is built on top of Jasmine, but adds some very nice features, including something called Snapshot testing. While unit tests are typically intended to be precision surgical tools focused […]