Test Smells CTAL-AT Practice Questions (Page 3)

Questions 11–15

1. 11expert · hard

   A team has a legacy test suite with many test smells. The team is under pressure to deliver new features and cannot spend much time on refactoring. However, they want to improve the maintainability of the tests. Which approach would be most effective given the time constraint?

   • AIgnore the smells and focus on writing new tests.
   • BRefactor all tests at once to avoid leaving any smells.
   • CRewrite the entire test suite from scratch.
   • DPrioritize refactoring the tests that are most frequently failing or hardest to diagnose.
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2. 12application · medium

   A test class has a `@Before` method that creates a large object graph, including a database connection and several service objects, even though most tests only need a small part of it. This leads to slow and fragile tests. Which refactoring strategy would best address this test smell?

   • AAdd more assertions to each test to increase coverage.
   • BRemove all setup and inline the object creation in each test.
   • CUse a single test method that verifies all behaviors at once.
   • DReplace the general fixture with a minimal fixture for each test.
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4. 13application · medium

   A team is experiencing frequent test failures that are difficult to diagnose. A code review reveals that many tests contain multiple assertions without descriptive messages, and the tests are tightly coupled to specific implementation details. What is the most significant impact of these test smells on the team's ability to detect defects?

   • AThe tests become more effective because they cover more scenarios in a single test.
   • BThe tests become less reliable because they are sensitive to implementation changes, leading to false failures.
   • CThe tests become slower because they perform too many operations, reducing the frequency of test execution.
   • DThe tests become harder to read, but this does not affect defect detection.
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5. 14application · medium

   A team is reviewing a test suite and finds that many tests have names like `test1`, `test2`, and contain multiple assertions without comments. The team is concerned about the maintainability of the suite. What is the most significant impact of these test smells?

   • AThe tests are slow because they perform too many operations.
   • BThe tests are hard to understand, making it difficult to identify what behavior is being verified.
   • CThe tests are unreliable because they depend on external resources.
   • DThe tests are effective because they cover many scenarios in a single test.
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6. 15foundation · easy

   Which of the following is a negative impact of test smells on test maintainability?

   • AThey make tests dependent on specific hardware configurations
   • BThey increase the number of test cases required to achieve coverage
   • CThey make tests more difficult to understand and modify
   • DThey reduce the need for test documentation
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