Good Test, Better Code – From Unit Testing to Behavior-Driven Development

Published August 13th, 2009 Under Coding, Software Testing | 1 Comment

“Testing is design”; “Unit tests are documentation”; “Tests are specifications”. These are sought-after rewards of developer testing practices, but simply writing tests or even writing tests before writing production code doesn’t make these wishes come true. When we take up unit testing, we initially tend to do things a certain way. Over time we might adopt test-driven development, mock-objects, and ultimately we might adopt the specification and design practices that lead to the lauded benefits of self-documenting code, design through test, and ultimately to a greater level of agility. This presentation walks through some of the principal phases of evolving basic testing skills toward sustainable agility through test-driven, client-driven, and behavior-driven programming, touching on unit-testing, mock objects, test-driven development, behavior-driven development, and domain-specific languages for testing.

Outside-in development with Ubuntu

Published July 16th, 2009 Under Software Testing | Leave a Comment

This is a demo of how I’d like to be able to do Behaviour-driven development (from the outside-in) on Ubuntu using stories and automated testing. The story-part is already possible with cucumber – but it’d be nice to be able to use Python right? And the automated testing would use the new notification system in Ubuntu Jaunty (in the way that growl + rspactor is used on the mac) – AFAICS this should be possible already, we just need easy configuration etc.

In The Brain of JBehave 2

Published June 23rd, 2009 Under Software Testing | Leave a Comment

Elizabeth Keogh is a developer for JBehave, a behaviour-driven development testing framework built on top of JUnit. Elizabeth Keogh showed an example of using the current version of JBehave with a little screencast: she used the Game of Life program that she had written to write JBehave tests in what seemingly looked like natural language. JBehave actually operates with keywords in the test files and uses pattern matching to see whether the test was successful.

http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/java-jee/jbehave-2

NGourd Presentation

Published June 11th, 2009 Under Coding | Leave a Comment

NGourd, a BDD framework for C#, is presented by Michael Minutillo (@wolfbyte) at the Australian Virtual Alt.Net meeting, May 11 2009. NGourd is designed heavily influenced by the Cucumber tool from the ruby world. The intention is to create a clean separation between the intent of a specification versus it’s execution. This allows developers to concentrate on the technical details while non-programmers can verify and even author specifications.

When I finally understood Behaviour-Driven Development

Published June 8th, 2009 Under Software Testing, TDD | Leave a Comment

This is a lightning talk about why I, as an experienced TDD:er, at first was convinced that BDD was completely useless and more or less harmful, which faulty assumptions I had and why I’ve completely changed my mind.

http://smidig2007.confreaks.com/d1t2p05.html

Behavior Driven Development in Java with easyb

Published May 27th, 2009 Under Coding | Leave a Comment

Easyb is a new and very hip behavior driven development framework for Java. This talk will go through the basic principles of Behavior Driven Development, and look at how it builds on and differs from “traditional” Test-Driven Development. It then moves on to look at easyb, a very cool DSL-based behavior driven development framework for Java that uses Groovy to let you pretty much write tests that document themselves.The talk will be very practical. We will look at how to write basic easyb test stories, how to use fixtures in easyb and of course how to integrate easyb tests into your build process. There will also be some live demos just to prove that it really is as easy as it looks! No knowledge of TDD, BDD or Groovy is required!

easyb home page

BDD with Cucumber

Published May 12th, 2009 Under Software Testing | Leave a Comment

Cucumber is a BDD tool that aids in outside-in development by executing plain-text features/stories as automated acceptance tests. Written in conjunction with the stakeholder, these Cucumber “features” clearly articulate business value and also serve as a practical guide throughout the development process: by explicitly outlining the expected outcomes of various scenarios developers know both where to begin and when they are finished. This video presents the basic usage of Cucumber, primarily in the context of web applications, which will include a survey of the common tools used for in-memory and in-browser testing. Common questions and pitfalls that arise will also be discussed.

Cucumber and Watir 101

Published May 7th, 2009 Under Agile | Leave a Comment

Dave Hoover demonstrates how to use Watir with Cucumber. Actually, he uses his own library SafariWatir, but you could easily swap it with Watir, FireWatir, ChromeWatir or Celerity. Cucumber lets software development teams describe how software should behave in plain text. The text is written in a business-readable domain-specific language and serves as documentation, automated tests and development-aid – all rolled into one format.   Sorry – no sound.

Executable User Stories with RSpec and BDD

Published April 14th, 2009 Under Coding | Leave a Comment

An introduction to BDD and how to make plain text User Stories executable with RSpec’s Story Framework, which is written in Ruby, but runs against production code written in any programming language.

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/hellesoy-bdd-rspec

Note: the RSpec Story runner described in this presentation has been reborn as Cucumber.

Langston’s Ant in Ruby Kata

Published March 25th, 2009 Under Coding | Leave a Comment

This is a screen cast, of Micah writing code to implement Langston’s Ant, BDD style. He uses the shiny new RubyMine IDE for development, and Limelight to run the simulation.  In martial arts, the techniques performed in kata are not always by the book. There is an aspect of art, creativity, and entertainment. At several points in this Langston’s Ant kata Micah Martin intentionally decided to bend the rules to enhance artistic and entertainment values. I leave it up to you whether I made the right compromise or not.

Source Code

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