book

Test Driven Development: By Example

by Kent Beck

November 2002

Intermediate to advanced

240 pages

5h 9m

English

Addison-Wesley Professional

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Courage

What’s Next?MetaphorJUnit UsageCode MetricsProcessTest QualityOne Last Review
Test (noun)Isolated TestTest ListTest FirstAssert FirstTest DataEvident Data
One Step TestStarter TestExplanation TestLearning Test1Another TestRegression TestBreakDo OverCheap Desk, Nice Chair
Child TestMock ObjectSelf ShuntLog StringCrash Test DummyBroken TestClean Check-in
Fake It (’Til You Make It)TriangulateObvious ImplementationOne to Many
AssertionFixtureExternal FixtureTest MethodException TestAll Tests
CommandValue ObjectNull ObjectTemplate MethodPluggable ObjectPluggable Selector3Factory MethodImposterCompositeCollecting ParameterSingleton
Reconcile DifferencesIsolate ChangeMigrate DataExtract MethodInline MethodExtract InterfaceMove MethodMethod ObjectAdd ParameterMethod Parameter to Constructor Parameter
How large should your steps be?What don’t you have to test?How do you know if you have good tests?How does TDD lead to frameworks?How much feedback do you need?When should you delete tests?How do the programming language and environment influence TDD?Can you test drive enormous systems?Can you drive development with application-level tests?How do you switch to TDD midstream?Who is TDD intended for?Is TDD sensitive to initial conditions?How does TDD relate to patterns?Why does TDD work?What’s with the name?How does TDD relate to the practices of Extreme Programming?Darach’s Challenge
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Afterword

Martin Fowler

One of the hardest things to communicate about test-driven development is the mental state that it puts you in. I remember a session on the original C3 project with Ralph Beattie where we had to implement a complicated set of pay conditions. Ralph broke them down into a set of test cases, and off we set one by one to make them work. Progress was steady and unhurried; because it was unhurried it seemed slow, but looking back on how much we got done, it was clear that despite the unhurried feeling progress was really fast.

Despite all the fancy tools that we have, programming is still hard. I can remember many programming times when I feel like I was trying to keep several balls in the air at once, any lapse of concentration ...