Can anyone spot what is wrong with this picture? Look closely – there are no fuse carriers and the lines have been shorted by a thick piece of wire.

Wondering what it means? – When an electric surge happens – there is no fuse that will blow and break the circuit. The surge will go right into the homes and kill all the devices which are On at that time – TVs, bulbs, mobile chargers…

I am not trying to educate BESCOM electricians – they are lazy & crazy and they don’t read my blog – but this post is about unit tests.

Last week I answered a questionnaire for a friend of mine who is doing a course work about Agile – one of the questions was – Is it not absurd to write unit tests?

The above picture is the answer to the question. Unit tests are like fuses – they blow up in your build and prevent a blow up in production in future. Commenting out an unit test is like shorting the circuit with a thick piece of wire – like in the above picture.

For eg., when a developer forgets to do a null check – and the failing unit test is not fixed, but instead is commented out – your users will be greeted with a Null Pointer exception on the last screen of a payment page. Imagine how mad your client will be?

Anyway I rest my case – next time when you comment out a failing test – think of that picture – and imagine a surge happening and hitting a 52″ Plasma TV showing the last ball of a 20-20 match…pattt…bshhhhhh – and a bunch of hideously laughing BESCOM electricians.