Test-Driven Development Workout:
Building Programming Muscle

Premise

Programming skills are back in style!

Test-driven development is based on a cycle of testing, coding, and refactoring. The meat of this session is a real-time workout where you explore and exercise your skills in techniques that build rippling muscles for Java developers.

Whether you want to become a bodybuilding champion or a top-drawer developer, choice of regimen is critical. For developers, writing the tests first changes the way you design, improves the quality of your code, and guarantees your code is testable.

Like a bodybuilder’s hi-protein diet, refactoring shows you how to take code that merely works, and turn it into lean, easy-to-understand code that you'll be proud of.

This tutorial cranks up the workout intensity with pair programming (a form of spotting), a contest, and prizes, all designed to maximize your sweat equity in building your Java muscle. 

Format

• Half day.
• 1/4 lecture, 3/4 hands-on. People will work with partners for most exercises.

Background Reading

Test-Driven Development: By Example, Kent Beck.

Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, by Martin Fowler et al.

Refactoring Workbook, by William C. Wake. Addison-Wesley, 2003.

Audience

This class is for Java, C#, or VB programmers only.

Bring a laptop if you can, with a programming environment and JUnit or NUnit installed and working. If you don't have a laptop, that's cool--we'll pair you with someone who does. Either way, please contact William.Wake@acm.org, and let him know whether you'll be pumping your own iron or need to share.

Offerings

Offered at OOPSLA '04 and OOPSLA '03.

Facilitators

Steve Metsker is a researcher and author who explores and writes about ways to expand the abilities of developers. Steve is the author of Building Parsers with Java, Design Patterns Java Workbook, and the forthcoming Design Patterns C# Workbook.

Also of Interest

Consulting services