Developing a working piece of software is difficult. Just like building an airplane, it requires talented people, working components, and a testing framework. No plane leaves the hangar before everything is ready, checked and double-checked.
In JetBrains, we adopt the same philosophy for building our software. Vigorous testing helps us discover bugs and problems before the final product takes off. Just like building a plane, software development is a process that consists of multiple stages. Although the authors of this post are not aerospace engineers, we will use simplified aircraft analogies. There are several reasons for that: aircraft is beautiful, it is pure engineering, and it reveals that the problems we raise here are not exclusive to software engineering.
The bigger your product, the more steps and modules there are. To make sure your software is ready to lift off, every module needs to be tested and correctly integrated with everything else. CI/CD services, if set up correctly, help automate this process. Most importantly, they remove the human factor famous for one careless action being able to lead to total disaster.
Contrary to popular belief, testing is very important in front-end development. To continue the analogy, your plane is not only required to fly – it has to be comfortable inside! Moreover, its exterior affects how airplane flights (aerodynamics). Getting back to the front end, this means that you have to test the usability as well as functionality. This makes front-end testing a must. In this article, we will provide an overview of UI testing used in TeamCity. If you have any questions about the technical details – don’t hesitate to ask us.