I think I disagree with Kent, but your explanation is clearer, so I'll object here.

There's nothing wrong with hitting the same assertion multiple times, even if it doesn't sit nicely in your gut.

From a purely philosophical point of view: If I have testFoo(), testBar(), and testFooAndBar(), and my Foo is plain wrong, then both testFoo() and testFooAndBar() must fail. Anything less is misleading/dishonest.

From a practical side: Changes happen. Someone will remove testBar(), and then you're down to 0 assertions on Bar, even though you have a test claiming to testFooAndBar(). It's not even a crazy hypothetical. Someone with a different test philosophy will think (to quote TFA) "They are redundant! Something must be wrong." and delete testBar() because obviously testFooAndBar() already covers it.

Anyway, we all know how to deal with repetition. That's what programming is!

  testFoo()
  _ = validateFoo(foo())

  testBar()
  _ = validateBar(bar())

  testFooAndBar()
  foo = validateFoo(foo())
  bar = validateBar(bar())
  _   = validateFooAndBar(fooAndBar(foo, bar))

▲ hungryhobbit 2 days ago | parent [-]

If you have people on your team deleting valid tests because of "philosophy", I think you have much bigger problems to solve than anything Kent Beck can help with.

	▲	mrkeen 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		To be clear, the philosophy I quoted was directly from Kent Beck in TFA, i.e. this is Kent Beck's "help". I say leave both tests as is. Kent Beck says: `From a purely aesthetic standpoint (& don’t discount aesthetics), leaving both tests as is offends my sensibilities. They are redundant! Something must be wrong.` It's not just philosophy, it's aesthetics apparently!