A Tale of Two Ideas

Every day, we encounter ideas and viewpoints that affect our lives in one way or another. Sometimes we agree with the ideas we hear, other times we disagree, and many times we aren’t immediately sure if we agree or disagree with the ideas we encounter. The challenge we face is discerning which ideas are true and which are false.

While ideas come from a variety of sources, by far the easiest example of opposing ideas is politics (don’t worry, this is not a political opinion article). Each election cycle, candidates give speeches and participate in debates to make their ideas known in an effort to gain supporters who will vote for them in the upcoming election. However, the decision rests with the voters who must decide which candidate’s ideas most closely align with their own beliefs.

Forks in the road

The remainder of this article discusses an example of opposing ideas from my career in the software development industry. As such, many readers will not find it very useful due to its technical nature. If you are interested in a more general example, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!

Over the last few months, I’ve been interested in the topic of testing React components and I came across the concept of shallow rendering. In a nutshell, shallow rendering allows you to test React components without rendering their child components. React’s documentation says the following about shallow rendering (plus some other stuff not relevant to this article).

Shallow rendering lets you render a component “one level deep”, … This does not require a DOM.

While some believe that shallow rendering is a good technique for testing React components, others disagree thus creating two opposing viewpoints of which technique is best. While I do not intend on giving my own thoughts on the subject, I would like to share my thoughts about the two ideas as a way of demonstrating how to discern between differing viewpoints.

Zooming out

Once you have identified a set of opposing viewpoints, it is helpful to “zoom out” from the specifics and look at what high-level differences exist between the ideas. When we stay “zoomed in” we can miss important details and make poor judgement calls due to insufficient information. Often, the high-level differences result in a cascade of logic that eventually leads to the details that appear to be radically different from each other even though they stem from similar but slightly different high-level viewpoints.

For my shallow rendering investigation, I compared an article by Kent C. Dodds called ”Why I Never Use Shallow Rendering” with an article by Tim Doherty called ”In Defense of Shallow Rendering”. While you may find other differences, I found two high-level differences between the articles (again, I’m saving my opinions for a different article). The two differences I identified were:

• Overall testing methodology (testing pyramid vs testing trophy)
• Definition of “implementation details”

Testing methodology

One of the biggest differences between the two opinions on shallow rendering, as discussed in the aforementioned articles, is the overall testing methodology. Kent developed the “testing trophy” methodology where integration tests are favored over unit tests whereas Tim subscribes to the more traditional “testing pyramid” where unit tests are favored over integration tests. This difference in how testing should be approached is a big reason why they differ on the idea of shallow rendering.

Implementation details

Another difference I noticed was the definition of “implementation details”. While both Tim and Kent discuss implementation details, they use it to mean very different things. For example, Tim mentions in his article that “the DOM is an implementation detail” and goes on to say that child components are implementation details when testing a parent component. Kent looks at implementation details from the user’s perspective in which case the DOM would not be an implementation detail but instead a necessary part of the code. These difference perspectives on implementation details further explain why the two authors have very different thoughts on shallow rendering.

Making the judgement call

So, the question you are probably asking yourself is “which approach is right?” However, this is not always the best question to ask. While it is often the case where one idea is right and another idea is wrong, there are instances where both ideas are right depending on the context or use. Remember that the goal is not always to find which idea is right and parade that idea through the streets in a triumphal procession; sometimes simply understanding each idea thoroughly will help you achieve the results you desire.

In most cases, there comes a time to make the judgement call and decide which idea you believe to be true. When you do, be prepared for others to disagree with your conclusion and be willing to accept their feedback. Hearing feedback from others or searching for more information yourself may result in your opinion changing on a subject, and that’s okay! Making incorrect judgements, while undesirable, should be viewed as a learning opportunity rather than a failure.

Making a decision on a subject can be scary at times especially if the decision could have an impact on those around you such as your family, friends, or employer. We have all likely heard of people who made simple decisions that resulted in a massive problem down the road and while this does happen, don’t let that stop you from making your decision and moving on. I’ve made many decisions in my career that I later found were less than ideal or just flat out wrong! The key in situations like this is simple: learn from the poor decision, change your future decisions, and move on with your life 🙂

If you are interested in the follow up article I wrote to this about my personal opinions on shallow rendering, check it out here!