The Way of Testivus - Unit Testing Wisdom From An Ancient Softwa Agitating Thoughts & IdeasThe Way of Testivus - Unit Testing Wisdom From An Ancient Software Start-upby Alberto SavoiaApril 26, 2007 Summary Some good advice on developer and unit testing, packaged as cryptic bits of ancient Eastern wisdom in the hope of getting your attention. Please note: for a nicely formatted, easy to read, and perfect for printing, copy of this material in PDF (complete with antique looking papyrus) you can go to: Less unit testing dogma. Translated by Alberto Savoia In May 2006, an ill-prepared international expedition to the Himalayas lost its way. Once inside, they saw a maze of ancient, and messy, cubicles. Among the many things they discovered inside the cave was a note left by one of the programmers. We have finished the release ahead of schedule – again. The explorers looked at each other in astonishment. What was the secret of these ancient programmers? And what had happened to them? The master answered:
Tips-First for Test-First Of all the exciting ideas and revelations that came from Kent Beck's original XP book, Test-First Programming has been the one that most significantly affected the way I work on a day-to-day basis. I love programming test-first. It's a great way to take a large, amorphous task and solve it piece by piece. Here are a bunch of things I wish somebody had told me about test-first programming. Unit Testing is not All Testing So, after I started doing test-first, I walked around for about six months all, "my code is perfect because I wrote tests". However, you can still automate a very large percentage of acceptance tests. Test-First is a structure for writing good code at least as much as it's a means for verifying code Code that has been written in a test-first style tends to have certain qualities. As it happens, those exact qualities -- tight cohesion and loose coupling -- are exactly what characterizes the best software architectures. Test-first is better suited for some things than others