Tag: craftmanship

  • Making a meal of architectural alignment and the test-induced-design-damage fallacy

    Making a meal of architectural alignment and the test-induced-design-damage fallacy

    Starter A few days ago Simon Brown posted a thoughtful piece called “Package by component and architecturally-aligned testing.” The first part of the post discusses the tensions between the common packaging approaches package-by-layer and package-by-feature. His conclusion, that neither is the right answer, is supported by a quote from Jason Gorman (that expresses the essence…

  • Diamond recycling (and painting yourself into a corner)

    Diamond recycling (and painting yourself into a corner)

    The post I wrote recently on recycling tests in TDD got quite a few responses. I’m going to take this opportunity to respond to some of the points that got raised. Do we really need to use the term “recycling”? The TDD cycle as popularly taught includes the instruction to “write a failing test”. The point…

  • Recycling tests in TDD

    Recycling tests in TDD

    The standard way that TDD is described is as Red-Green-Refactor: Red: write a failing test Green: get it to pass as quickly as possible Refactor: improve the design, using the tests as a safety net Repeat TL;DR; I’ve found that step 1) might be better expressed as: Red: write a failing test, or make an…

  • Eat your own dogma food

    Eat your own dogma food

    The software development community experiences fad after fad. Consultants and thought leaders dream up new methodologies; old practices are relabelled and promoted as the next big thing; flame wars are fought over names, tabs and brace position. One of the few practices that has stood the test of time is that of “eating your own…

  • When is a tester not a tester?

    When is a tester not a tester?

    No, I’m not trawling through my xmas cracker jokes. I was looking through the programme for DevWeek 2014 and both my sessions are tagged as “Test”. This is following a pattern started at ScanDev last year and followed by several other conferences at home and abroad. Why am I bothered? It’s not that I mind…

  • Tedium or interest? The choice is yours.

    During his excellent software craftsmanship session at Lean Agile Scotland, Sandro Mancuso made an analogy between software maintenance and gardening. A garden needs constant attention – lawns need cut; flower beds need weeded; old and diseased pl…