Test Driven Developmenta Practical Guide

Test-driven Development: A Practical Guide by DaveAstels

Winner of the 2004 Jolt Award for Technical Book.

ISBN 0-131-01649-0 (part of The Coad Series published by Prentice Hall) should start shipping late July 2003.

There will be books available for sale at XPAU in early August. BTW, I'll be there as well. -- DaveAstels

... and, of course, OOPSLA -- DaveAstels

See http://www.adaptionsoft.com/tddapg.html (BrokenLink - try http://web.archive.org/web/20050310040514/http://www.adaptionsoft.com/tddapg.html or http://www.adaptionsoft.com/pg2xp.html.)

Here's some comments I've received from people who have read drafts:

"The most significant part of the book, the complete project, is clearly the most useful for the readers who've done a little TDD, but are not really experts."

"I think this section is wonderful and XP has been crying out for something like it."

-- AlanFrancis

"Once again Dave, the book is great. I love it."

-- KayPentecost

"There's no doubt in my mind that you've got a winner here. The writing is very clear and understandable. The book has a quality of smoothness that many technical books lack."

"TDD isn't magic and your book doesn't make it sound magical. As such, I believe it will appeal to a wider audience. Moreover, I think it clearly conveys a message that transcends XP: TDD is a no-nonsense programming technique that helps mere mortals grow better designs validated by rigorous tests. Unfortunately, until now this message has been generally locked up inside XP. I believe your book will help break out TDD for consumption by the masses. I believe readers new to TDD will experience a watershed moment in their career."

-- MikeClark

"Dave's book is full of examples of Test-driven Development. There's an extended example to show you how TDD works over a longer haul. There are small examples showing how to use most of the TDD-related tools that are available. There are even examples in most of the languages where TDD is used, though the book's main focus is on examples in Java. This is a book about practice, with real examples rather than dry theory."

"The core value of Dave's book, the real meat, is in the code. Test-driven Development is a technique that we use as we program. No matter what design or modeling we have done before we begin programming, TDD helps us make the code better. I'm sure that it will help you, if you'll give this book, and what it teaches, a chance."

-- RonJeffries (from the foreword)

Unsolicited comments from readers

This book was my first introduction to TDD and I worked through about 80% of the example code, even though I don't do Java. It was worth the effort just to "practice" implementing the concepts and reading Dave's non-TDD tips and recommendations. This has been my favorite book on TDD so far, even over Kent Beck's TDD book. A good introduction and the examples make you think through things and practice using it with his example code. I've been happily using TDD ever since, even though we're not using any other Agile or XP practices, this raised the quality of my code, the speed of my development and it refreshed my enjoyment w/ programming after 20 years as a professional programmer. I started using regression-testing 12 years ago, but I don't think that can help unless you're using a TDD approach. Thank you David!

-- StewStryker?

Thanks for the praise, Stew. I'm glad you enjoyed it. You might be interested to know that I've started (or maybe started starting) on another.

--DaveAstels

My review is available here: http://cplusplus.anthonyw.cjb.net/test_driven_development.html -- AnthonyWilliams

CategoryBook CategoryTesting