Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests by Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce

I did not realize how much I still have to learn about writing good object-oriented (OO) code, and about hewing to a tight test driven development (TDD) methodology, before I read Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided By Tests. My education in OO and unit testing has been largely theoretical, with no time spent directly learning from experienced OO programmers; my best mentor was a COBOL coder. Books like Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (“Gang of Four”), Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development, Xunit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code, and others are wonderful but have few detailed real-world business-case examples.

That said, I admit that I skimmed through some of the middle chapters where the application was being built — it was simple to skip the details of Java implementation and focus on the points where a decision was being made, based on tests, about where to put/move a piece code. The authors did well in steering away from anything too Java-centric, that the book would remain accessible to those of us who are not deep in that language.

There is no need for me to recount the contents — perusal of the table of contents should be sufficient. Some of the advice about testing overlaps that found in XUnit Test Patterns, but the overlaps is small enough to warrant reading both. Naturally, some of the advice will reinforce what any good and self-reflective programmer will have already figured out about writing tests. In that case you receive validation and further justification. And much of the advice on OO programming can be found in more detail in other works, though here it is uniquely combined with TDD to shed new light on the advantages of OO.

A few particular highlights for me:

• Let necessity drive design, rather week-long UML sessions.
• Write to interfaces, initially ignoring implementation. Interfaces should name and describe relationships between classes.
• Deploy as early as possible. Do so even before the application does anything, just to prove that the framework can be deployed.
• Readability applies to test code as well. I already believed that, but this presentation will help me explain that better to doubters.
• Test names can be extremely descriptive (prior post)
• Realizing that I have been over-reliant on Microsoft’s Moles (prior post)

Posted with : Tech, General Programming, Software Testing, Book reviews and commentaries, Agile / Scrum