When I have to implement a new feature or fix a bug, I usually try to recreate the situation with a test.  I sometime spend around 3 hours coming up with fixtures and writing the test.  The actual feature implementation or bug fixing takes less than 1 hour.Does anyone else out there spend at least 3 times longer to write a test compared to actually implementing a feature or fixing a bug?  What's the acceptable ratio of time spent writing test to writing code?
How long should we generally spend writing unit tests for a new feature or bug fixing?
unit testing
It varies on the complexity of the bug or feature. I recall one project that once had a 1.5 week development tiem estimate... and a 3 month testing estimate. The code change was small, a handful of lines here and there but it impacted a number of components of an insurance system in a number of ways, so had to be tested very thoroughly. Another time there was a bug that involved a parenthesis in the wrong place. Took 2 hours to find it, 2 seconds to fix it, but about a week to test dozens of scenarios that may have been affected by the change in logic.In general, I don't worry about the ratio of time spent coding to time spent testing because there's just no way to be accurate. I find that in some projects, a project-relative ratio appears that is usually standard (to the project), but even then that can change later.Spend as much time as is needed to say with confidence that the code works properly.