Add daily email for 2024-02-24

When should you start writing tests?

source/_daily_emails/2024-02-24.md

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+---
+title: When should you start writing tests?
+date: 2024-02-24
+permalink: archive/2024/02/24/when-should-you-start-writing-tests
+snippet: |
+    Which in a project's lifecycle should you start writing tests and doing test-driven development?
+tags:
+    - software-development
+    - php
+    - automated-testing
+    - test-driven-development
+cta: subscription
+---
+
+When you start a new project, when should you start writing tests and doing test-driven development?
+
+Is it before you write any code, or is it something you can start later?
+
+When starting [versa], I was only scaffolding the console commands and running some basic commands such as "composer install" and "phpunit".
+
+At that point, there wasn't any business logic to test.
+
+The first versions only supported PHP, so there was no complexity around which language the project used.
+
+There was no logic to determine which language or package manager was used.
+
+Now I've started to add this functionality - such as determining the project type from its composer.json or package.json file - there is logic to test, and I've started to write tests and do test-driven development.
+
+At this phase, I can see the value, which I couldn't when setting up the application to begin with, and different have any logic worth testing.
+
+[versa]: {{site.url}}/archive/2024/02/19/introducing-versa