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by Sam Gentile.
Original Post: Unit Testing is a Coding Task James
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James Newkirk attempts to justify Microsoft's rationale, responding to Peter and others, in including Unit Testing in VS Team System and not VS by speaking about the consistent experience of using the suite of tools versus individual tools that can be used today and going forward like NUnit and NUnitAddin. While this is all true and defensible, he asks “Why is unit testing singled out? What about the other tools, like source code control, and static analysis, profiling, etc? Certainly these tools are valuable during development. So, that said why focus just on unit testing?”
Well, I'll answer. It's pretty obvious to me. It's not because TDD is some trendy thing (as some people have suggested in the comments). Its because Unit Testing is an individual thing, not necessarily a team thing and individual developer things go in Visual Studio, plain and simple. What do I mean? I don't view Unit Testing (ala NUnit), and coding as separate things. They go together and can't be pulled apart. Not because TDD is trendy, but because its the right way to develop software. I express my intention in the test, I write some test code to test my intention, I write some code to fulfill that intention and I keep developing, testing, refactoring in that way to fulfill that intention. Its like saying Refactoring doesn't belong in VS but should be in a separate product. Coding, Refactoring, Testing is a constant developer's task, inseparable. The “other” tools like source control, profiling, etc, are, in my mind, “team” activities that are done outside the individual. You don't profile for instance until you need to do it (premature optimization anyone?) Do you need the “Team” tools if you are a team of one? No, but you sure need unit testing facilities. Sure, the unit tests become a group activity and each individual's unit tests get incorporated into the suite that gets run, but you still have the fact that basic unit testing is part and parcel of each individual writing good solid code and if it's not included, then it's too much friction. Rightly or wrongly, Microsoft, with Visual Studio, influences the minds of millions of developers with whats in the product. A lot of them may not develop this skill and go out and fetch some separate tool. Microsoft has a chance to do the right thing here. Just do it.
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