Unit Testing Best Practices

The video tutorial explains the importance of unit testing in programming, highlighting how it helps maintain code integrity when multiple developers are involved. It covers the basics of unit testing, including defining tests, automating them, and ensuring code coverage. The tutorial also discusses using Python frameworks like unittest and pytest, and offers best practices for writing effective tests. It emphasizes the importance of identifying interesting test cases and maintaining a living contract of function requirements through tests.

What is the primary purpose of unit testing in a large codebase?

• To improve the speed of the program

• To ensure individual functions work as expected

• To reduce the number of programmers needed

• To increase the complexity of the code

How do unit tests help in maintaining code requirements?

• By increasing the number of programmers

• By reducing the number of functions

• By defining requirements in code and blocking changes until tests pass

• By automatically fixing bugs

What should programmers do if they are confident that a change in requirements is safe?

• Write new program code

• Delete the old tests

• Update the unit tests to reflect the new expected behavior

• Ignore the unit tests

What is the goal of achieving code coverage in unit testing?

• To execute every possible path of execution through the function

• To write tests for every possible input value

• To reduce the number of test cases

• To increase the complexity of the code

What is a common practice when a bug is found after testing?

• Increase the number of programmers

• Ignore the bug

• Add a test for the exact failure case to prevent it from happening again

• Delete the function

Which Python module is commonly used for writing unit tests?

• matplotlib

• unittest

• Pandas

• NumPy

What is a key aspect of writing effective unit tests?

• Identifying interesting test cases

• Writing as many tests as possible

• Memorizing the syntax

• Using the most complex framework

What is the role of boilerplate code in unit testing?

• To make the code more complex

• To provide a repeated required syntax that can be copied and pasted

• To reduce the number of test cases

• To increase the number of programmers

Why might it not be worth it for beginner programmers to write unit tests for all their code?

• Because unit tests are too expensive

• Because unit tests are only for advanced programmers

• Because writing test code can take as long as writing the program code

• Because unit tests are not useful

What is a good habit for programmers when writing or changing a function?

• To call it with a few different arguments to verify it works as expected

• To only test with one argument

• To avoid testing until the end

• To write as many lines of code as possible