Tony Cardella: .NET Testing using NCrunch - Episode 365

Tony Cardella is a seasoned software engineer based in Houston, Texas. With a robust background in enterprise development, Tony brings deep expertise in the .NET Framework (C#), Python, and cloud platforms including Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. His technical repertoire spans both relational databases — such as SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL — and NoSQL solutions like Azure Cosmos DB. Tony is a strong advocate for developer productivity tools, frequently leveraging JetBrains products including ReSharper, DataGrip, PyCharm, and Rider, as well as Visual Studio. Outside the world of code, Tony is equally passionate about strength training, whether he’s lifting weights himself or coaching others in the discipline. Topics of Discussion: [1:34] Tony shares his career journey, starting with a consulting company that reached out to him while he was job hunting. [3:17] NCrunch is an automated testing tool that runs unit tests continuously, focusing on impacted tests. [5:08] Challenges and benefits of NCrunch, and why would we need to use it? [7:44] Tony shares his approach to unit testing, focusing on covering 80% of the code with minimal effort and addressing the remaining 20% as needed. [8:51] The importance of not over-investing in unit tests that may not provide significant value. [11:47] Tony explains how Ncrunch provides code coverage metrics and visual indicators of covered and uncovered code. [12:59] The tool’s ability to show exactly where unit tests are failing, without needing to dive into stack traces. [13:51] Distributed processing and integration tests. [27:44] The challenges of running integration tests with external dependencies, such as databases. [29:18] Exploratory testing and code quality. [32:34] Tony emphasizes the value of unit tests in codifying tribal knowledge and ensuring code quality. Mentioned in this Episode: Clear Measure Way Architect Forum Software Engineer Forum Tony Cardella Lightning Talks! The Code Gorilla Survey: Fixing Bugs Stealing Time from Development NCrunch Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.