Confidence in software development should be rooted in your code, with testing serving as a means of validating that confidence. If you rely solely on testing for assurance, you'll never truly be confident because you can't possibly account for every scenario that millions of users might encounter. To develop high-quality code, it's essential to shift the mindset from seeing testing as the source of confidence to understanding that confidence must first come from the code itself.
Confidence should originate from your code
Testing is an essential part of any software development process. However, it's important to recognize that testing should validate the confidence you have in your code, not replace it. If you base your confidence solely on testing, you set yourself up for disappointment. After all, testing can never cover every possible situation that might arise when your code is used by hundreds of millions of customers in the real world.
Your confidence in your code should be established from the start. This requires you to rigorously analyze every line of code, asking yourself under what circumstances it might fail. When you approach coding with this mindset, you will identify potential issues early and handle them appropriately, allowing you to say with certainty that your code is robust.
The self-fulfilling nature of confidence
If you think your code will work, you're right. If you think it might fail, you're also right. This paradox stems from where you place your confidence. If you are confident in your code, you’ll find that it will likely stand up to scrutiny. Conversely, if you’re uncertain, you’ll find evidence to support that doubt.
This happens because, when you rely solely on testing to build confidence, you are always waiting for a problem to emerge. If you encounter issues during testing, you see it as validation of your doubts. This leads to a vicious cycle of uncertainty, where you're constantly dependent on test cases to tell you whether your code is reliable.
The pitfalls of relying too heavily on test cases
Many developers fall into the trap of focusing solely on test cases, expecting them to reveal problems. The danger here is that testing becomes the primary means of finding issues, instead of being a tool to confirm the quality of your already strong code. When you expect to find problems through test cases, you become satisfied with finding a few bugs and mistakenly believe that you've covered all the issues.
However, test cases can never be completely exhaustive, and this is why a codebase that relies purely on testing remains tentative. You end up passing your code to others with the expectation that they will identify even more issues, perpetuating a cycle of fixing and re-testing.
The mindset shift: Confidence in code first
To break this cycle, you must change your mindset. Rather than relying on testing as the primary means of validating your code, start with a thorough code review process. Analyze your code line by line as if you didn't write it and scrutinize every potential failure point. When you take this approach, your confidence is rooted in the code itself, not the results of your test cases.
Testing, then, becomes a secondary measure—a tool to confirm what you already know about your code's quality. This mindset allows you to tell others with certainty which scenarios your code handles and which ones it doesn't, giving you a true sense of control and confidence in your work.
Why high-quality code is more than just test cases
One of the reasons why high-quality code is often elusive is that we measure quality based on how many bugs our test cases reveal. This approach equates the quality of your test cases with the quality of your code. But the truth is, the quality of your code should not be determined by test cases alone.
Great code is measured by its ability to handle different situations without relying solely on external validation. When you focus on writing high-quality code from the start, testing simply serves as a means to prove what you already know: that your code is robust, reliable, and ready to handle real-world use cases.
Testing should always be part of your development process, but it should never be the foundation of your confidence. Your confidence must come from your code—through careful, rigorous analysis and understanding of how it behaves in various situations. By shifting your mindset in this way, you elevate the quality of your code beyond what can be achieved through testing alone, and you build a product that stands up to the challenges of the real world.
By internalizing this approach, you’ll find a greater sense of fulfilment and confidence in your work, ultimately leading to higher quality and more reliable software.
"Testing can only prove the presence of bugs, not their absence." – Edsger W. Dijkstra, Notes on Structured Programming
