Unit Testing Checklist

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If you don’t test your code, you can never know for sure that it’s working. Beyond just catching bugs, a thorough suite of unit tests can give you the confidence you need to fine-tune your code. Think about these points when evaluating your own unit-testing practices:

• Write unit tests for all code.

• Write the tests as you go along. Don’t leave them for a “later” that may never come.

• Make sure code passes unit tests and integration tests before you check it into the source code control system.

• Use an automated tool such as NUnit to make the unit-testing process easy and repeatable.

• Check the tests and any necessary setup files into your source code control system.

• Consider using TDD to ensure 100% testing coverage.

• Refactor code only when you have a thorough set of tests for the code.

Now that the code is starting to pile up, I want to turn our attention to the development environment itself. Visual Studio .NET is a fine IDE, but as you’ll see in the next chapter, many tools are available that can make it even better.

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