Tony Cardella: .NET Testing using NCrunch - Episode 365
Release Date: 09/01/2025
Azure & DevOps Podcast
Carola Lilienthal is an architect and coach at Workplace Solutions. She is the author of Sustainable Software Architecture and shares her knowledge at international conferences. Henning Schwentner is a software architect, coach, and consultant at WPS – Workplace Solutions where he helps teams modernize legacy systems. He is a thought leader in DDD and software architecture, and he has also authored Domain Storytelling. Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.
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Scott Hanselman is a teacher at heart. He speaks all over to whoever will listen. He's have written code that you, dear listener, has used. Scott has been blogging, coding, and podcasting a LONG time. He codes, writes, speaks, empowers, promotes, braids, learns and listens - usually not in that order. And he's a Vice President at Microsoft in his day job focusing on Developer Community. You can find him on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Mastodon! His Hanselminutes podcast has surpassed 900 episodes, and his Azure Friday show, over 750 episodes. Connect with him at hanselman.com Mentioned in...
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Jared Parsons is a Developer Manager for the .NET Tools team at Microsoft. He's also done extensive work on the C# Compiler Team. Everybody tuning in probably uses his code on a day-to-day basis! Jared started out at Microsoft over 20 years ago as a Developer; moved on to become a Senior Developer; then Principal Developer on Midori OS; and most recently, the Principal Developer on C# Compiler Team, and now a Developer Manager. He's spoken at many conferences, like Microsoft Build and others. Mentioned in this Episode Want to Learn More? Visit...
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Andrew Lock is a staff software engineer at Datadog and educator whose contributions to the .NET ecosystem have shaped how developers approach modern web applications. Located in the UK, Andrew is a Microsoft MVP, Author of , and has an active blog all about his experience working with .NET and ASP.NET Core. Topics of Discussion: [2:56] Andrew talks about appreciating the joy of coding and the minutiae of figuring out the correct way to do things. [3:28] Andrew discusses the various testing frameworks available for .NET, including MS Test, NUnit, XUnit, and TUnit. He explains the...
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Ben Day is a seasoned software consultant and fractional CTO. With over two decades of experience, he brings a blend of hands-on coding expertise, strategic clarity, and people-focused coaching to help companies — from startups to Fortune 500s — deliver high-quality software faster and with less friction. As the founder of Benjamin Day Consulting, Inc., Ben offers training, coaching, and architectural guidance rooted in Agile, Scrum, Azure DevOps, and GitHub best practices. He’s a Microsoft MVP, a certified Professional Scrum Trainer for over 15 years, and a sought-after speaker...
info_outlineTony Cardella is a seasoned software engineer based in Houston, Texas. With a robust background in enterprise development, Tony brings deep expertise in the .NET Framework (C#), Python, and cloud platforms including Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. His technical repertoire spans both relational databases — such as SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL — and NoSQL solutions like Azure Cosmos DB.
Tony is a strong advocate for developer productivity tools, frequently leveraging JetBrains products including ReSharper, DataGrip, PyCharm, and Rider, as well as Visual Studio. Outside the world of code, Tony is equally passionate about strength training, whether he’s lifting weights himself or coaching others in the discipline.
Topics of Discussion:
[1:34] Tony shares his career journey, starting with a consulting company that reached out to him while he was job hunting.
[3:17] NCrunch is an automated testing tool that runs unit tests continuously, focusing on impacted tests.
[5:08] Challenges and benefits of NCrunch, and why would we need to use it?
[7:44] Tony shares his approach to unit testing, focusing on covering 80% of the code with minimal effort and addressing the remaining 20% as needed.
[8:51] The importance of not over-investing in unit tests that may not provide significant value.
[11:47] Tony explains how Ncrunch provides code coverage metrics and visual indicators of covered and uncovered code.
[12:59] The tool’s ability to show exactly where unit tests are failing, without needing to dive into stack traces.
[13:51] Distributed processing and integration tests.
[27:44] The challenges of running integration tests with external dependencies, such as databases.
[29:18] Exploratory testing and code quality.
[32:34] Tony emphasizes the value of unit tests in codifying tribal knowledge and ensuring code quality.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Survey: Fixing Bugs Stealing Time from Development
Want to Learn More?
Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.