Monthly Meetings

June 30, 2004: Test Driven Development

Downloads

• Neils's presentation on Test Driven Development

Abstract

Donald Knuth once said of an algorithm, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." Test Driven Development (TDD) is a technique for ensuring that each line of program code is covered by a test. It does this by having you write the test first, before the line of code.

This month's talk will be about using TDD as a stand-alone technique. Although TDD is a practice of Extreme Programming, it can be profitably done by itself. The talk will include the principles of TDD, unit test frameworks in several languages, and test decoupling techniques such as Mock Objects.

Bio

Neil Ostrove has been a software developer for several decades. He has degrees in Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science. He is retired from AT&T/Lucent/Bell Laboratories and at present develops tools for chemists as a contractor at Chemical Abstracts Service, a division of the American Chemical Society.