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Hola friends! We recently created a Discord for Software Automation and this was one of our Watercooler discussions we had which was then continued on Reddit

Responses range from people with 3 to 30+ YOE in the industry and wanted to share this with the community!

Feel free to add comments to the notion doc to make this document ever growing!

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For the record, I’m referring to the commonly and possibly outdated testing pyramid when making this post:

Abstract Summary:

This discussion revolves around defining the terms "Unit Test," "Integration Test," and "End-to-End (E2E) Test" in the context of software testing. Different individuals and organizations have varying definitions and perspectives on these terms, leading to some confusion and debate. However, there are some common themes and general understandings that emerge from the discussion:

Unit Test:

• Tests a single unit of code (function, method, or class) in isolation
• External dependencies are mocked or stubbed
• Runs quickly, often within milliseconds
• Provides feedback on the correctness of individual code units
• Should make up the majority of tests in a test suite

Integration Test:

• Tests the integration between multiple components or systems
• Involves actual external dependencies (databases, APIs, services)
• Tests the interaction and communication between different parts of the application
• Can be difficult to define the scope and boundaries of integration tests

End-to-End (E2E) Test:

• Tests the entire system or application from start to finish