news.ycombinator.com• Dec 6, 2021• 1 min read
Ask HN: Why is the gaming industry resistant to automated tests?I work at bigcorp working on applications built on top of kubernetes/public cloud as the target platform. One thing I’ve been impressed by at work is how writing automated tests is paramount. The “Growing Software guided by Tests,” “Unit Testing: principles and practices,” and other media/books are recommended by engineers to help others get up to speed writing good tests and good software. What is a good test, and what is a waste of time to test? This is a constant discussion and I love it.As a hobby, I write video games because why not. One thing I’ve noticed is how different attitudes are on automated testing. It’s highly discouraged because ‘games don’t lend themselves to being tested’ apparently. It’s just as amazing to see how resistant this slice of the overall IT industry is to something the rest of the industry has considered very good.This culminates for me in two anecdotes.First, trying to find out what a good test looks like for video games is very, very, very challenging.