A software test is an automated procedure that makes assertions about a piece of code and then reports the success of those assertions back to you. A test may make assertions about anything from an individual function to the behavior of an entire feature.
Tests, much like the rest of our code, deal in layers of abstraction and granularity. If we were to test a car abstractly, we may simply seek to assert the following attributes:
- It has four wheels
- It has a steering wheel
- It drives
- It has a working horn
Obviously, this is not a very useful set of assertions for car engineers, as these attributes are either incredibly obvious or insufficiently described. The assertion It drives is important, but without extra detail, all it expresses is a generic business-oriented objective. It's similar to a project manager asking for a software engineer to ensure that...
