Why Software Testing Is a Waste of Time
Talkat JCON Europe 2023 · on Tuesday, 2023-06-20· at 17:00· Cinema 6, Im Mediapark 1, 50670 Köln, Germany·
summary
Argues most testing waste comes from poor choices not testing itself, cites a report that TDD reduces bugs by 80% and Netflix switching from 100% end‑to‑end to a test pyramid. Gives concrete fixes: run tests per PR, use test impact analysis, parallelize E2E, avoid UI for test data, prefer fixtures and deep links, prefer parameterized suites with JUnit 5 CSV or methodSource and Spock data tables, use Mockito for mocks and Allure for rich failure logs and flaky‑test detection. Deploy cadence examples: every 10 minutes informs these tradeoffs.
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chapters (33)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:30About the speaker
- 2:14ChatGPT’s take on testing
- 3:39Testing is not a waste
- 4:21Automatic rollback systems
- 5:25Test-driven development
- 7:10Test pyramid explained
- 9:39Unit test example
- 11:05Integration test scope
- 12:28End-to-end test scope
- 12:49Manual test automation
- 13:53Benefits of automation
- 14:59When not to automate
- 15:44Test execution frequency
- 17:29Running only impacted tests
- 18:35Flaky tests explained
- 21:23Data-driven testing pitfalls
- 23:54Parameterized tests
- 26:19Logic in tests
- 28:24AssertJ for assertions
- 29:28Behavior-driven development
- 31:35Inefficient end-to-end tests
- 33:41Parallel test execution
- 35:04Test failure reports
- 36:50Q&A session
- 37:12Deleting tests for speed
- 39:16Test naming and refactoring
- 41:37Unit vs integration tests
- 46:19Mocking tips
- 47:51Convincing management
- 50:55External compliance testing
- 56:06Fixing flaky tests
- 58:17Flaky test management tools
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