Now this is cool news. It was announced a few days ago that Unit Testing and some other features are being moved out of the Developer and Tester Team System versions into the Professional version, meaning pretty much everyone will have access to it.
However, I disagree with Brad Wilson that unit testing should be in the .NET framework. I do think it should be in all versions of the IDE, including the free Express editions. And I also think that there should be a way to run unit tests on build machines without having to install Visual Studio. But moving it into the language – I think that’s too low level.
Still, very cool news, and I look forward to seeing what else the team does in “Orcas”
Brad didn’t suggest putting it into the “language”; just so that it’s available with the standard installation of .NET (just like MSBuild is). And I completely agree with Brad. Having a testing framework that’s not part of the Framework is quite ridiculous, esp. when MSBuild is.
I understand from a marketing persective why MS wouldn’t want Unit Testing within the framework, but from a developer standpoint it should be. If it was built into the framework then it would be more accessible for all .Net developers.
History has shown that exclusion hurts in the long run, and Microsoft can still profit even if VS Express has more advanced features such as Unit Tests, because they still have to sell Windows Server 200x and SQL 200x licenses. Don’t forget the classic concept that the tighter the grip, the faster that things slip between your fingers, it holds true here.
Considering that .Net is a developer thing, these kinds of decisions are best left up to the actual developers, not suits or marketeers.