The next couple meetings will be about practicing TDD (Test Driven Development). In February, Dan Mullins will give an overview of TDD fundamentals. In March, Brandon Carlson will show examples of real-world benefits.

Most people think writing tests only pays off in the long-term. A security blanket running in the CI server to catch future bugs. Unfortunately, tests tend to get lost when a project needs to be "done" now. By writing tests before you write code, you will see benefits in the short-tem too.

Unit testing tools like Mockito and JUnit speed up your development by shortening feedback loops and isolating modules from outside failures.   

Functional testing tools like Cucumber and Fitnesse let you understand when something is "Done" and become the "executable documentation" UML diagrams never were.

Location:  Geolearning

Time: 2/2/2010  6:00