lecture 17 of 180 completed

When your tests run without you

What changes on a build server, and why a slow or flaky suite quietly becomes useless.

What you'll learn

  • What changes when tests run without you
  • Why a slow suite stops being run at all
  • Why flaky tests teach a team to ignore red

You write tests on your laptop. They do their real job on a build server: a machine that runs your whole suite automatically whenever someone changes the code. Most teams call this CI.

Four things are different there, and they surprise almost everyone.

The machine is slower, and there is no screen. Build servers are usually smaller than your laptop and run the browser without showing it. Tests that quietly depended on your fast machine start failing. That is not bad luck. The server is finding timing assumptions you did not know you had made.

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The Foundations track and the first 5 lectures of each framework are free. This lecture is part of the paid course, which unlocks every lecture, all three frameworks, and downloads.

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