TDD Pro-Tip: RORA (Run Once, Run Away) is insidious, and although I am an old-guard agilist, I still have to actively resist its charms every day. Alright, well, look, I figured out after some helpful application of 2×4’s to the head, that I needed to phrase these pro-tips as advice to me, even when, as […]
Run Once, Run Away (RORA) Even Bites Pros Read More »
TDD Pro-Tip: An important steerability force for me is in my strategies for sidestepping the pyramid problem. There are a lot of ways we could describe this "pyramid problem". Perhaps the most straightforward way is to ask how much code is "in play" during a test. At some point, and it varies by codebase, the
Steering Around The Pyramid Problem Read More »
Because TDD’ing little toy problems is so easy, I try to turn my big real-world problems into collections of them. Yeah, it’s the steering premise rearing it’s ugly head again, though maybe from a different angle than we’ve undertaken before. (The short premises video is here) A lot of folks claim that TDD is just
TDD Pro-Tip: Make Hard Problems Collections Of Toy Problems Read More »
TDD Pro-Tip: I spend considerable effort making it possible not only to implement a test I want, but to make that test easy to read, to write, to run, and to debug. I’ve talked a lot about five premises of TDD. The money premise, the steering premise, and the chaining premise all get involved when
Refactor Your Tests Read More »
Geekery Pro-Tip: I frequently remind myself: Think Less, Sense More. It’s advice I give to me all over the place, from the most technical parts of the sociotechnical fractal to the most social parts of it. It’s an odd thing to say, so we better dig in to it a little. I’ve recently come from
Geekery Pro-Tip: Think Less, Sense More Read More »
TDD Pro-Tip: Before I write the first test in a new context, I usually design until I get to a state of "Nervous Optimism". A couple of days ago, I was party to some drinking geekery with my colleagues at a hookah bar restaurant dance club. It was the end of a long day, and
TDD Pro-Tip: Design Until Nervous Optimism Read More »
TDD Pro-Tip: I stay very aware of my testing context’s data, and specifically of what data is opaque and what data is transparent. Those terms, transparent and opaque, need a little explanation. Sometimes the code I’m testing doesn’t vary based on the entirety of its input. A trivial example, the function that validates the date
TDD Pro-Tip: Stay Aware Of Testing Data Read More »
TDD Pro-Tip: What we TDD most rigorously and faithfully is our branching logic. This is the insight one needs to start gaining TDD’s massive productivity benefit. All three terms are important, "our", "branching", and "logic", so let’s take them one at a time. Remember as we forge in to this: there is no free lunch,
Pro-Tip (TDD): Focus on Our Branching Logic Read More »
TDD Pro-Tip: Wrap framework collection classes early and often. The Primitive Obsession smell is ubiquitous around collections, and not seeing and fixing it can greatly hamper productivity. In HollywoodSimulator, a common act of every Person is to spend time manipulating their little black book — the collection of the contacts they have. The first-pass way
TDD Pro-Tip: Wrap Containers Early & Often Read More »
TDD Pro-Tip: Because the power of TDD is operational rather than artifactual, test-before provides several benefits over test-after. Sometimes folks propose the writing of tests after the code is written. The idea here is that the point of the game is to have the tests, and that it makes no difference whether we do them
TDD Pro-Tip: Test-Before Is Operationally Different Read More »
