Mastering JavaScript Design Patterns - Second Edition

Testing in the small with unit tests

To many, unit testing is a foreign concept. This is understandable as it is a topic which is poorly taught in many schools. I know that I've done six years of higher education in computing science without it being mentioned. It is unfortunate because delivering a quality product is a pretty important part of any project.

For those who know about unit testing, there is a big barrier to adoption. Managers, and even developers, frequently see unit testing, and automated testing as a whole, as a waste of time. After all you cannot ship a unit test to your customer nor do most customers care whether their product has been properly unit tested.

Unit testing is notoriously difficult to define. It is close enough to ...