Test Driven Development: By Example 1st Edition

by Kent Beck (Author)

341 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0321146533

ISBN-10: 9780321146533

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Quite simply, test-driven development is meant to eliminate fear in application development. While some fear is healthy (often viewed as a conscience that tells programmers to "be careful!"), the author believes that byproducts of fear include tentative, grumpy, and uncommunicative programmers who are unable to absorb constructive criticism. When programming teams buy into TDD, they immediately see positive results. They eliminate the fear involved in their jobs, and are better equipped to tackle the difficult challenges that face them. TDD eliminates tentative traits, it teaches programmers to communicate, and it encourages team members to seek out criticism However, even the author admits that grumpiness must be worked out individually! In short, the premise behind TDD is that code should be continually tested and refactored. Kent Beck teaches programmers by example, so they can painlessly and dramatically increase the quality of their work.

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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Clean code that works--now. This is the seeming contradiction that lies behind much of the pain of programming. Test-driven development replies to this contradiction with a paradox--test the program before you write it.

A new idea? Not at all. Since the dawn of computing, programmers have been specifying the inputs and outputs before programming precisely. Test-driven development takes this age-old idea, mixes it with modern languages and programming environments, and cooks up a tasty stew guaranteed to satisfy your appetite for clean code that works--now.

Developers face complex programming challenges every day, yet they are not always readily prepared to determine the best solution. More often than not, such difficult projects generate a great deal of stress and bad code. To garner the strength and courage needed to surmount seemingly Herculean tasks, programmers should look to test-driven development (TDD), a proven set of techniques that encourage simple designs and test suites that inspire confidence.

By driving development with automated tests and then eliminating duplication, any developer can write reliable, bug-free code no matter what its level of complexity. Moreover, TDD encourages programmers to learn quickly, communicate more clearly, and seek out constructive feedback.

Readers will learn to:

Solve complicated tasks, beginning with the simple and proceeding to the more complex.

Write automated tests before coding.

Grow a design organically by refactoring to add design decisions one at a time.

Create tests for more complicated logic, including reflection and exceptions.

Use patterns to decide what tests to write.

Create tests using xUnit, the architecture at the heart of many programmer-oriented testing tools.

This book follows two TDD projects from start to finish, illustrating techniques programmers can use to easily and dramatically increase the quality of their work. The examples are followed by references to the featured TDD patterns and refactorings. With its emphasis on agile methods and fast development strategies, Test-Driven Development is sure to inspire readers to embrace these under-utilized but powerful techniques.

0321146530B10172002

About the Author

Kent Beck consistently challenges software engineering dogma, promoting ideas like patterns, test-driven development, and Extreme Programming. Currently affiliated with Three Rivers Institute and Agitar Software, he is the author of many Addison-Wesley titles.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0321146530
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (November 8, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780321146533
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0321146533
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.38 x 0.55 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #62,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #34 in Software Design & Engineering
- #35 in Software Testing
- #108 in Software Development (Books)

Customer Reviews:
341 ratings

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Kent Beck

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Kent Beck is the founder and director of Three Rivers Institute (TRI). His career has combined the practice of software development with reflection, innovation, and communication. His contributions to software development include patterns for software, the rediscovery of test-first programming, the xUnit family of developer testing tools, and Extreme Programming. He currently divides his time between writing, programming, and coaching. Beck is the author/co-author of Implementation Patterns, Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change 2nd Edition, Contributing to Eclipse, Test-Driven Development: By Example, Planning Extreme Programming, Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, and the JUnit Pocket Guide. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Oregon.

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Top reviews from the United States

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The difference between a methodologist and a terrorist ...

Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2020

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... is that you can negotiate with a terrorist.

I can pretty much deal with the chummy style of writing, but "keeping it light" doesn't work when I'm digging for information. I found the mindlessly simplistic initial case study to be more of a distraction than aid. When it takes that many pages, false starts, side trips, and retries to add two numbers, whatever point was being made gets lost in the vapid example used to make it. (We can skip the fact that, as the author notes, the number format being used is poorly suited to the nominal problem domain.)

Then, given that the whole book is about software testing I find it odd that there's little to no direct mention of a central question: what makes software testable or not? "Design for testability" has been a topic in the hardware world for a half-century, give or take. But, even with the software world's relatively recent attention to testing and even with dogmatic manifestos like this, I have not found any body of knowledge or practice that addresses the topic systematically.

Machinists talk about what makes an alloy machinable. Farmers know what make land farmable. Woodworkers can specify what makes a wood workable. Seemingly everyone knows what makes their subject material better or worse for their purpose and can tell you in detail. Everyone except software testers, apparently. This book discusses practice without actually saying what it practices on, and leaves me feeling that I heard only half of a conversation.

This is going to the used market as fast as I can fling it.

-- wiredweird

15 people found this helpful

Helpful

sdbhicoh

Kindle formatting has ruined a great book

Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2021

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The Kindle formatting on this book is horrible. It makes me wonder whether it was literally a copy and paste job from a pdf. I’m finding figure text mixed in with body text. Page numbers randomly pop up, breaking up paragraphs. The code examples have lost some of their carriage returns, which then results in some awkward word wrapping. And most importantly, the concept of how the author is using a running to do list is lost to the reader. Since the author’s formatting has been destroyed, the to do list is an ever expanding plain text list that never reflects when something has been checked off.

6 people found this helpful

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Joel Palmer

The only book on TDD you need or want

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2020

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There is a lot of bad information about TDD out there. When you go back to this original text, you will find out what TDD really is and is not. When you do TDD as described in this book, you will get the results you expect from TDD. Nothing in this book needs to be updated.

6 people found this helpful

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Nunya Bidness

Kindle version bad formatting: Lacks strikethrough

Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2021

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The content of the book might be good, however I had to return the Kindle version because the formatting is lacking strikethrough. See the screenshot. I will just have to check out a hard copy from the local library.

It is a shame that we are disallowed from giving the publisher (or whoever creates the Kindle formatting) a separate rating from the author. Author maybe 5 star, publisher/formatter 1 star.

4 people found this helpful

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Mike Phelps

Still the best reference

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2021

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If you think TDD is hard or isn't valuable, you probably didn't learn from Kent. He takes you through his internal thought process on why he sets up tests the way he does, or reverts work because of a false start, etc. Read this in 2006, reread in 2020 an learned even more. Even the expert has something to learn here. Best money a dev can spend on their career.

2 people found this helpful

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Martin P. Cohen

Allows you to judge TDD for yourself

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2003

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Let me say first off that I agree with much that Kent Beck has to say: 1. Testing should be done along with the coding. 2. Use regression tests to be confident of making changes. 3. In many ways testing can be used as documentation since it is much more definitive than specification documents. 4. Testing should be used to have the client sign off on a product. In reading the book I learned the specifics of how tests are designed in TDD. It seems reasonable and I am going to make a conscious effort at designing my tests in the way suggested.
Where I disagree is in the use of the tests to drive software design. In the first part of the book, which I think is the most important part, a very good coding problem is analyzed - it is realistic, limited in scope and far from trivial. I followed along until I reached a point where things stopped making sense. I skipped ahead to see where things were headed and then things became clear.
What is being advocated is a type of bottom up design approach. This may work for some. It may even be that the book faithfully reproduced Beck's reasoning process. It does not work for me. I first have to see the larger picture, what he refers to as the "metaphor." The whole thing would have been much clearer to me if at the beginning I was told that one approach to summing money in different currencies would be to use an array to store the information but that instead the implementation would create a list similar to how things are done in LISP.
I urge the reader to judge for him/herself. Like I said this is a good example to go through. I even learned some things about more advanced uses of object oriented programming. As for software design I am going to stick with dataflow diagrams. They are still the best tool that I know of for putting together software, UML notwithstanding.

21 people found this helpful

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Luiz

Life changing book

Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2019

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10 years ago I knew I wanted to write tests and do TDD, but I didn't know how. This book showed me the way, and changed my career.

I've read it many times and still learn form it today. The short chapters gives the reader a flow that is unique, like TDD baby steps.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Stefan

A bit too basic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 22, 2021

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I ended up returning this book. You can learn more from just doing some TDD yourself. Just write tests, then the function, then make it all better. That's all it is.

My biggest gripe with this book was that it is just too simple for practical use. If it covered testing API calls, database interactions, some front end tests, user management, Web Host configuration and complex, real world tasks like that then I'd give this book 5 stars. No one uses a Money object with a Times() function in real life.

Yannick

kind of like a Sun news article where everything is duplicated into ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 9, 2018

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Not my kind of book. First section is incredibly slow, kind of like a Sun news article where everything is duplicated into oblivion (why even call them chapters?). I am now struggling to read the rest.

3 people found this helpful

Björn Bergdahl

Good book, recieved bad print.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 19, 2019

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Mixed bag, the Book is great but the copy of the book I recieved is printed on some very thin paper. The size is somewhat correct but the weight is not even close to stated. In the 400g ballpark instead of 700g area. Cheaply printed pirate copy?!

Eddy Young

Excellent book on TDD

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 30, 2015

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As a practitioner of TDD already, I found this book to be a good refresher. I can see it working as a good introduction for TDD beginners. The book also contains some pearls of wisdom for programming in general and which add context to the teachings.

One person found this helpful

Victor Alexiev

Boring stuff

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

Didn't like the way (author's style) TDD was introduced. It could have been a nice blog post, just not enough content to make a whole book out of it.

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Test Driven Development: By Example 1st Edition

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Kent Beck

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