What is the primary goal of unit testing in software development?

The primary goal of unit testing in software development is to ensure that individual components function correctly. Unit testing focuses on the smallest testable parts of an application, often referred to as units, which can be functions, methods, or classes. By isolating each unit of code, developers can validate its correctness by providing predetermined inputs and verifying the outputs against expected results. This helps identify bugs at an early stage, improving code reliability and facilitating easier debugging when failures occur.

Additionally, unit testing encourages better code design and fosters the development of modular and maintainable software. Each test case targets specific functionality within a unit, ensuring that all aspects of a component work as intended without interacting with other parts of the application.

In contrast, the other choices are oriented towards different aspects of software testing. Validating the overall system performance focuses on testing the application as a whole, rather than individual components. Testing the interactions between different components relates to integration testing, which assesses how well various components work together. Verifying user acceptance of the software pertains to user acceptance testing, which evaluates if the software meets the needs and requirements of end-users.