# Are you testing your app or just the framework?

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/no-compromises-1309932/are-you-testing-your-app-or-just-the-framework
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/no-compromises-1309932/are-you-testing-your-app-or-just-the-framework.md
Podcast: [No Compromises](https://stenobird.com/podcast/no-compromises-1309932)
Published: 2026-03-14T05:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/b10aff66
Audio file: https://media.transistor.fm/b10aff66/2dc11eaf.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/no-compromises-1309932/episodes/are-you-testing-your-app-or-just-the-framework
Duration seconds: 776

## Resource

Do you ever finish writing a test and wonder if it is actually proving anything about your code or just confirming that Laravel works? In the latest episode of the No Compromises podcast, we discuss how to tell the difference between tests that validate your logic and tests that merely exercise the framework. We share a practical gut check: if you cannot make a test fail by changing something in your own application code, it probably should not be in your test suite. We also look at this idea from the other direction, asking whether the code being tested is something we actually wrote. We also dig into why testing validation rules is worth the effort even when they feel boilerplate, how feature versus unit test style shapes these decisions, and why the real goal is simply getting to a place where your tests help you ask the right questions. Join the Mastering Laravel community at https://masteringlaravel.io/community 00:00 Are we testing code or framework 02:00 Joel metric for framework-only tests 05:15 Bottom-up testing perspective by test type 07:36 Why validation rules still deserve tests 10:40 Silly bit

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## Transcript

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