Test Driven Development: By Example

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Quite simply, test-driven development is meant to eliminate fear in application development. While some fear is healthy (often viewed as a conscience that tells programmers to “be careful!”), the author believes that byproducts of fear include tentative, grumpy, and uncommunicative programmers who are unable to absorb constructive criticism. When programming teams buy into TDD, they immediately see positive results. They eliminate the fear involved in their jobs, and are better equipped to tackle the difficult challenges that face them. TDD eliminates tentative traits, it teaches programmers to communicate, and it encourages team members to seek out criticism However, even the author admits that grumpiness must be worked out individually! In short, the premise behind TDD is that code should be continually tested and refactored. Kent Beck teaches programmers by example, so they can painlessly and dramatically increase the quality of their work.

Our Top Reviews

Reviewer: Martin P. Cohen
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Allows you to judge TDD for yourself
Review: Let me say first off that I agree with much that Kent Beck has to say: 1. Testing should be done along with the coding. 2. Use regression tests to be confident of making changes. 3. In many ways testing can be used as documentation since it is much more definitive than specification documents. 4. Testing should be used to have the client sign off on a product. In reading the book I learned the specifics of how tests are designed in TDD. It seems reasonable and I am going to make a conscious effort at designing my tests in the way suggested.Where I disagree is in the use of the tests to drive software design. In the first part of the book, which I think is the most important part, a very good coding problem is analyzed – it is realistic, limited in scope and far from trivial. I followed along until I reached a point where things stopped making sense. I skipped ahead to see where things were headed and then things became clear.What is being advocated is a type of bottom up design approach. This may work for some. It may even be that the book faithfully reproduced Beck’s reasoning process. It does not work for me. I first have to see the larger picture, what he refers to as the “metaphor.” The whole thing would have been much clearer to me if at the beginning I was told that one approach to summing money in different currencies would be to use an array to store the information but that instead the implementation would create a list similar to how things are done in LISP.I urge the reader to judge for him/herself. Like I said this is a good example to go through. I even learned some things about more advanced uses of object oriented programming. As for software design I am going to stick with dataflow diagrams. They are still the best tool that I know of for putting together software, UML notwithstanding.

Reviewer: C. K. Ray
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: helpful for cross-platform coding too
Review: It’s about time that someone wrote this book. Some programmers have been doing test-driven-development since the earliest days of our profession, and the rest of us have been wondering why it is so hard to development software the “traditional” (non-TDD) way.Test-driven development (or as I prefer to call it, test-driven-design) helps you figure out the most useful interface to your class-under-test, without getting you into the psychological trap of not “really” wanting to test (and thus prove faulty) your “wonderful” code, because your code doesn’t exist yet. The tests help you think about the implementation in small, mostly painless, steps.TDD also helps you write portable code. By getting portions of the logical parts of your application done first (the “model” of “model-view-controller”), you easily keep the logic code OUT of the GUI code. Typically, programming without test-driven-design makes it too easy to put all your logic into your GUI class. Almost all books on how to use MFC and other GUI class frameworks mix the logic code with view code — you should read this book so you can be a better programmer.

Reviewer: Michael Wagner
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A must have for developers
Review: This book is a must have if you really want to dig into the practice of TDD. Kent Beck describes how you should begin, how to step through tests and production code and comes with handy examples.The book begins with a full example of how to create and evolve software completely test driven. You’ll learn how to write the tests, how to fill leaps if you don’t have any clue how to write the next test on the list with intermediate tests and you see, how easy design decisions can be applied or reverted if necessary.At the end of the book there is also a discussion about what TDD is all about, how you can apply it to your own skills/practices and what you have to look for when applying it onto new but also existing applications.I liked reading it very much.

Reviewer: R. Williams
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: 90% is Just Showing Up
Review: Everyone who’s read about XP has wanted a book like this forever, so a decent performance was bound to be a happy occasion (a hot dog is a feast to a starving man). I would disagree with the last reviewer and say that the first part of the book is the good part, when the author works through his ‘money’ example. At the end of it, there’s a great moment when Beck acknowledges the importance of metaphor, claiming that he’d done the same exercise a number of times, though this time, he had picked a better metaphor and it subsequently went a lot faster. I have to laugh at this. This is a case of obiter dicta (giving away the key to something in passing). But the funny thing is that Beck doesn’t notice how important it is. He proceeds to just meander through the rest of the book. Then, the book just goes down the rathole as we feel like we’re being treated to a prof who’s run through his material and is just waiting for the bell. The section on patterns is abominable, ending with a thing on Singleton that says something like ‘Don’t use global variables, your programs will be happier,’ which is a ridiculous capsulization of an issue that a lot of people have discussed many times before. A Singleton is globally available. It’s not a variable. Mail servers are globally available too. Guess we shouldn’t use them either.Let me also say that I am really kind of fed up with Kent Beck’s Opi Taylor writing style. It’s ok when the focus is on the KISS side of the equation and generally positive, but his snide little sideswipes throughout this book on everything from the open-closed principle to the idea of doing specifications (another searing, strong argument that boils down to the root of the word being the same as for the word speculation (!)) are really laughable. Makes me wanna say, yeah, who needs a spec if all they are doing is the 10 millionth payroll program or a currency converter. Don’t look to Kent Beck for big answers, as a matter of fact, by his own half-conscious admission, he’s as much in search of them as we are.So why 4 stars? Per the subject, the Woody Allen principle. Another hysterical part of this book is at the very end he shows a list of things someone else suggested, none of which are covered in the book, as if he had to tell us, at the end, that he knew just how much was missing.

Reviewer: Ian Scrivens
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I think this is a great book for those new to TDD, it’s no that long so you can get through it pretty quickly and I think it does a good job of summarising the most important points.

Reviewer: Rineez
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Must read before deciding whether you want to adopt TDD or not. You will probably start doing TDD.After reading this book I find myself far less skeptical about the practical usability of TDD.

Reviewer: carlos herique
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Essencial para desenvolvedores. Vá direto a fonte.

Reviewer: Emre AKA
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Kitap güzel fakat kitabın kalitesi iyi değil. Yaprakları plastik gibi.

Reviewer: Roberto
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Consigliato a tutti coloro che prendono la programmazione sul serio.Il libro è di poche pagine, ma denso di spunti utili per capire il TDD a fondo. Sconsigliato per una lettura superficiale.

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