In theory you should always write tests while you are developing your code. In the software industry this is called test driven development . This practice will usually generate some good thoughts about how you can make the code more robust and more reusable. It’s very difficult to change architecture after you have coded yourself into a hole. It’s a whole lot easier to do it right the first time than going back a second time and refactoring what you did the first time. When you have to go back and write your tests after you wrote the code it will tend to cause more rework versus writing the tests before you actual develop the code. Sometimes it’s hard to write tests as you go as requirements are changing all the time. This can cause frustration because you feel your tests are wasted time. A common excuse I hear is requirements are always changing so I have to go back there anyways. But if your developing the code the requirements are usually pretty set at that point. At least the overall idea. Maybe the guts of the code will change but the public interface shall remain the same (at least close to the same). I had an experience on a project that I am working on that made this point pretty clear. My task within the project was the write some tests around existing code. Basically adding code coverage to an existing model. Seems simply enough until I started looking into the model and discovered a lot of very tightly coupled code. A lot of tightly coupled public interface code.

Starting this process I was able to test a lot of the public interface. The parts that were not tightly coupled. Maybe about half of the public methods were in a testable state. A unit testable state to be exact. Then I ran into a major road block. I ran into some public interface methods that required a chain of methods to be called first in order to be able to test them. If TDD was used during development process this would have been avoided. The developer would have realized that the code was to coupled to be tested. So instead of saving that time I spent even more time refactoring and trying to decouple the methods. The end solution ended up a lot better but it required a lot more effort than just writing the test before the code or at least right after you have written your code.

It’s a good practice to get into even though at first it may be difficult to get into the habit. It’s even harder to do it on a regular basis when things are moving so fast. I believe that once you get good at it though it become’s natural and really part of your process. Also the more familiar you are with architecture in general and architecture within the project the easier it will become. You can see your vision ahead of time and predict what the code should look like. To sum it up always write your tests as you go. If you need to write them after your code that’s better than leaving them and letting them get behind.