Tests have mostly been parts of the codebase other developers than me have written. I occasionally break them when doing UI changes and update existing tests. But thinking about what and how, writing tests from scratch, or setting up test frameworks — this is newer territory. As I’m moving from coding front-of-the-frontend UI to building full frontends, now is the perfect time to catch up.

📺 Alicia Sedlock at Fronteers 2017:
The Landscape of Front-End Testing

This talk provided a great overview of different types of testing, and introduction to some test code and frameworks. It was just right for me to watch today. \o/

Unit 🌱	“for ensuring small pieces of code work as expected”
Integration 🖇	“check that all the small pieces play well together in the bigger picture”
Acceptance 🎯	“make sure we can accomplish major tasks”

Visual regression 📷	Got some experience here, and have seen various set ups. Our team ended up not finding the diffs practical, but it was a fun experiment.
Performance ⚡️	I’m used to testing performance manually, would love to get experience setting up automated tests in a workflow.
Accessibility 🤗	Same as with perf, want to learn how to automate the testing.

Turns out I knew more than I thought I did, funny how knowledge seeps into a brain without the owner noticing sometimes. But this talk was helpful, and now testing is less of a fuzzy concept and more something I’m ready to get cracking at.