From the Editor of Methods & Tools » unit testing

Ten Articles to Learn More on Test-Driven Development (TDD)

The Editor — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:56:58 +0000

The software development articles directory has just passed the mark of 2000 articles categorized in its database. Test-Driven Development (TDD) is currently a topic of debate in the software development community, as even the value of unit testing is questioned. Here is my selection of 10 interesting TDD articles that should help you get more knowledge on this topic. I have tried to find items that could apply more specifically to different programming languages.

* Improving Application Quality Using Test-Driven Development (TDD)

* Introduction to Test Driven Design (TDD)

* TDD from scratch

* Demystifying Extreme Programming: Test-Driven Programming

* TDD – FDD – BDD… Why not PDD?

* Using JMock in Test Driven Development

* Mocking the Embedded World: Test-Driven Development, Continuous Integration, and Design Patterns

* Test-Driven Development in Python

* Apply Test-Driven Development to your Database Projects

* Unit testing and Test Driven Development (TDD) for Flex and ActionScript 3.0

My 10 + 1 Favorite Unit Testing Articles

The Editor — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:22:27 +0000

This is a (personal) list of articles dealing with unit testing that I like. I have chosen to include material that is longer than the usual (short) blog posting. I encourage readers to give more objectivity to this subjective set by submitting in the comments what they preferred ;o)

Test Flexibly with AspectJ and Mock Objects

Automation for the People: Continuous testing

Exploring The Continuum Of Test Doubles

Unit Testing With C#

End to End, or, Another Run on the Hamster Wheel of Life

In Pursuit of Code Quality: Unit Testing Ajax Applications

Apply Test-Driven Development to your Database Projects

What It Means to Mock: Isolating Units for Testing

Unit testing and Test Driven Development (TDD) for Flex and ActionScript 3.0

Unit testing Web 2.0 applications using the Dojo Objective Harness

A Guide to Testing Rails Applications

Additional unit testing article resources

TestDriven.com – Articles Directory

IBM DeveloperWorks

Quality Assurance Links Directory – Articles Section

Software Development Articles, Unit Testing Section

SQA Zone – Articles Directory

Do We Need Unit Testing?

The Editor — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:47:02 +0000

A recent Methods & Tools poll examined how organizations perform unit testing. Is it an informal activity that is done before integration if there is some time left after programming or is it the key element of the development effort? The question was: How is unit testing performed at your location?

Proportion	2008	2006
Unit testing is not performed	17%	13%
Unit testing is informal	40%	46%
Unit tests cases are documented	9%	11%
Unit tests cases and their executions are documented	14%	16%
We use a Test Driven Development approach	20%	14%

Participants: 384 (2006:460)

Ending date: October 2008 (February 2006)

Despite the fact that the number of TDD adopters has grown nicely since the previous survey, you can notice that unit testing is still widely conducted in a informal manner, when it is not simply ignored by developers. This could sound weird when many people announced a general adoption of the agile approaches, but the results of our survey are similar to many other polls on the same topic.

Comparing the two surveys, it seems that people that were already doing unit testing formally have switched towards a TDD approach. People that don’t do unit testing have different reasons. Some will consider simply that they don’t add value to their development process, which is sometimes difficult to believe. For others, it is the lack of time, a reason more easier to understand ;o) Many complains that unit test are hard to write, but creating a good unit test is a proof that you understand what your code should do. I agree however, that it could be difficult to maintain large libraries of unit testing scripts if requirements are changing constantly. In the “good” reasons not to perform unit testing, some thinks for instance that the client side of Web application is not suited for this kind of tests. There are also some organizations that have separate testing teams. Their developers will rely entirely on the QA guys to test their application. You can also consider that when the software has a very limited life expectancy, it is not worth making unit tests.

Additional resources

TDD Survey Results by Stelligent (2007)

Developer Survey: Unit Testing & Other Tools

Telerik Watch: Survey Says: Unit Testing Still Not Mainstream

CodeProject: Survey Results – Do you use Unit Testing in development?