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Shift Left Is the Tip of the Iceberg

(semiengineering.com)
172 points yatrios | 1 comments | 19 Nov 24 14:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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0xbadcafebee ◴[19 Nov 24 15:15 UTC] No.42184298[source]▶
For those not aware, Shift Left[1] is (at this point) an old term that was coined for a specific use case, but now refers to a general concept. The concept is that, if you do needed things earlier in a product cycle, it will end up reducing your expense and time in the long run, even if it seems like it's taking longer for you to "get somewhere" earlier on. I think this[2] article is a good no-nonsense explainer for "Why Shift Left?".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift-left_testing [2] https://www.dynatrace.com/news/blog/what-is-shift-left-and-w...

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leoc ◴[19 Nov 24 17:01 UTC] No.42185611[source]▶
So “shift left” is roughly equivalent to “tests first” or “TDD”?
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1. crabbone ◴[19 Nov 24 21:44 UTC] No.42188425[source]▶
No, not really. It's a concept from the bygone era, before X-as-a-service took over a lot of software categories. It was intended to minimize friction between the QA and the development teams at the time the product was handed to QA. If the product had multiple defects, incrementally discovered, it would have to travel back and forth between the QA and the developers, stalling the development of the next version and generally creating a lot of noise and inconvenience due to the surrounding bureaucracy.

There's no need to write tests upfront for you to shift left. All shift left means is that testing happens during development. Whether you start by writing tests and then write the actual program or the other way around -- doesn't matter.