When it comes to software testing, it can feel like such a burden. But as your app grows in complexity, you’ll wish you had started sooner rather than later. Writing tests later has amazing benefits, where you will eventually want to add them, whether you prefer test-driven development (TDD) or more flexible testing strategies like test-last development(TLD), which I will discuss later in this article.

From my own experience as an indie dev currently developing the early stages of my app, Vibe Shift, I almost pushed buggy code to production that would have prevented users from using the main feature of the app. What would have happened if my users were to stumble upon my app just to realize it’s not working? Not only would it be a drag for the users, but it would be for me as well, as I scramble to pinpoint what caused the bug in the first place.

But if you care about your time as a developer and the experience of your users, you’re going to want to write tests eventually. In this article, I will discuss three reasons why you should care more about writing tests.

1. Quality Control Is Your Job Too

As an indie dev, you wear every hat: front-end engineer, back-end engineer, database designer, UX designer, and marketer. Add one more: quality assurance.

Manual testing is a given when you’re building or updating features, but it’s not enough. Automated tests ensure that when you update your app, your changes don’t accidentally break something else.

What if you're changing the schema of a table in your database to update your data structure, and this change inadvertently causes breaking changes in your application? Without tests, you might not realize that these changes have affected other parts of your app until it's too late, potentially leading to data inconsistencies or application errors.

At a company, you might rely on a dedicated QA team. But when you’re working solo, QA is all on you. Writing tests ensure your product’s quality remains intact, regardless of how often you update it.

2. It Builds Empathy for Your Users

Testing doesn’t just catch bugs; it helps you think about your users in new ways.

When you write tests, you’re forced to step outside your developer mindset and think like a user. It’s no longer just about “does my code work?” but “what happens if someone uses my app in a way I didn’t expect?”

For example, what happens if a user enters an invalid email? What if they refresh the page halfway through a checkout process? What if their internet drops right after they submit a form? These edge cases force you to slow down and anticipate the real-world scenarios users face every day.

You might have a main flow in mind, but users often interact with your app in ways you didn’t plan. Writing tests, especially component and end-to-end tests, helps you account for alternate paths:

• How users enter or exit a form: What if they close the tab mid-way or accidentally hit back

• How they interact with certain elements: Do they click the wrong button? Double-click?

• What happens when something unexpected occurs: Server downtime, expired sessions, or API failures can all affect user experience.

By testing these scenarios, you build empathy and create a smoother experience for your users.

3. It Saves Time in the Long Run

Writing tests can feel like extra work, especially when you’re already juggling feature development. But if your app is more than a simple CRUD project, tests save you time later.

Consider authentication alone: you need to handle both authenticated and unauthenticated users. Without tests, every production push means manually rechecking every scenario, which gets annoying over time.

Worse, small code changes can introduce subtle bugs. Without automated testing, you waste time tracking them down after the fact. And in the age of vibe coding and agentic IDEs, tests become much more crucial.

With tests, you can confidently push to production, knowing that critical paths are covered.

Bonus: Test-Last Development

Earlier in the article, I mentioned Test Last Development. If you don't know what that is, let me tell you what that is and why this might help you as an indie dev. Test Last Development(TLD), also known as Test After Development, is exactly what it’s called. Instead of writing your tests before you write code, like with TDD, you write your tests after you write your code. Essentially, you would develop a feature, and once you're done implementing it, you would then write your tests.

Test Last Development is great if you’re an indie dev, if you’re working on a project that is

• Experimental: You’re still trying to figure out what works

• Innovative: You’re testing ideas nobody has done before.

• An MVP: You need speed to get feedback quickly.

For example, imagine you’re adding a form where users submit prompts for your AI-powered backend. At this stage, you might not even know what kinds of inputs users will provide or how you’ll process them yet. Instead of trying to predict every edge case upfront, you focus on building the feature first.

Once it’s working and you’re confident about the behavior, then you write tests to lock in that functionality and catch regressions before pushing to production.

Of course, you don't have to just stick to Test Last Development. You can always decide to switch over to Test Driven Development in the future if you choose to do so. Either way, it's better to have some code coverage than no code coverage.

In Conclusion

If you care about your users, especially if you’re building human-centered apps, software testing should be part of your workflow. It ensures quality, builds empathy, and saves you time. Even as a solo developer, investing in testing pays off in faster updates, fewer headaches, and happier users.

The goal is not to get 100% code coverage. It’s to target the most crucial parts of the software to ensure a better experience for both you and your users.