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Comment by spinningslate | Hacker News Reader

> Maybe you don't want automated unit tests

Interested why you'd say this, can you elaborate? Do you mean tests in general or unit tests specifically?

I can't imagine automating a CD pipeline without having some automated testing as an integral step. If you don't have automated tests, how do you remain confident that you haven't introduced bugs/regressions?

Even in a small codebase that's easy to do - especially when you're evolving quickly.

Like I say: not tacit criticism, genuinely interested.

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I think the key point in the OP’s statement is “early on”

I think unit tests (or just more generally a test suite) is invaluable. But when you’re starting out small (1-3 person dev team) and the API is changing so rapidly (we learned something this week we didn’t know last week so that new service now only does 1 thing instead of 5 things), tests can _really_ slow down development. And as mentioned by the OP as well, adding unit tests (or a test suite in general) shouldn’t be too hard once you get a stable API

I might be preaching to the choir so to speak, but that’s just my $0.02

As someone who has mostly written early stage software with 1 to 3 developers, the single most reason to skip tests is the rapidly changing APIs. Also it is ok to ship somewhat buggy code. Use case validation and speed trumps accuracy.

Also invariably a lot of early stage code is in the front end and FE testing is very time consuming.

What has been immensely helpful is an automated build and deploy system, which quite honestly is very expensive to build in the iOS world. I just want a one click deploy to a clean machine every time I decide to deploy. This is kinda trivial in the backend world using containers but not so in the iOS world.

You can have automated builds and manual testing and deploy. It goes a long long way, especially in a small team that's still prototyping rapidly.

Appreciate the responses. Most of the things I work on involve financial modelling, so tests are as much part of specification as they are validation. I can see them causing some drag for evolving less algorithmic code, particularly UI. Always interesting to get different perspectives - thanks.

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