Unit Testing

So, if you have been looking around my site, you will have noticed that I am big fan of and a heavy user of Ansible. Indeed, as a computer engineer (or "software systems engineer", depending on which way you look at the coin), I view it as one of the essential tools in the DevOps/SysAdmin/Developer space to extend the concept of "DRY" (as in "Don't Repeat Yourself") out of the world of writing software and into the larger space of working with computers as a whole.

I have been writing a ton of unit tests of late, and I am constantly asking myself the question "What are good unit tests?" There are probably as many nuanced versions of this as their are developers, but when you boil it down, it comes down to the following:

When it comes to computer programmers and even computer aficionados, there are a number of things which are subject to debate, and at times, these can almost approach a religious holy war given the right individuals. Examples of some of these include "PC" vs. "Mac", "Windows" vs. "*NIX", "vi" vs. "emacs" and more. So it is of no surprise that even within testing, and specifically unit testing, there are some areas were competing  ideas can cause similar reactions.