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Test-Driven Development: A Practical Guide

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Test-Driven Development: A Practical Guide enables developers to write software that's simpler, leaner, more reliable ... just plain better.

Now, there's a TDD guide focused on real projects, real developers, real implementation challenges, and real code.

Renowned Agile development expert Dave Astels shows TDD at work in a start-to-finish project written in Java and using the JUnit testing framework. You'll learn how "test first" works, why it works, what obstacles you'll encounter, and how to transform TDD's promise into reality.

- Relentlessly practical! Full of downloadable code examples, hands-on exercises, and a fully hyperlinked version of the "resources" appendix

- Introduces powerful TDD tools and techniques - includig key JUnit extensions, presented by their creators (Scott Ambler, Tim Bacon, Mike Bowler, Mike Clark, Bryan Dollery, James Newkirk, Bob Payne, Kay Pentacost, and Jens Uwe Pipka)

562 pages, Paperback

First published July 12, 2003

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About the author

Dave Astels

3 books

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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
Profile Image for Ling Wang.
18 reviews9 followers
November 7, 2017
Bloated with code, not to my taste. I don’t understand why it won the JOLT award.
Profile Image for Franck Chauvel.
119 reviews5 followers
August 3, 2016
David Astels takes us through the construction of a movies database application using test-driven development (TDD), that is a methodology where we write the tests first and then the code to make these tests pass. The text is very practical and illustrates well how to refine user stories and tasks into tests. The text also surveys tools available for TDD practitioners, including testing libraries and unit testing frameworks for languages such as Ruby, Smalltalk, Python, VB, C++, C#, etc. Note that these tools descriptions are ageing, a bit more everyday.

In my view, this book is more practical than Test Driven Development: By Example, especially because the movie database is explained in depth and includes GUI testing as well as persistence testing. I would recommend Test Driven: Practical TDD and Acceptance TDD for Java Developers as an alternative, as it also illustrates corner cases of testing in practice.

This text—as well as the two other ones—mainly focuses on "inside-out" TDD, where components are tested and assembled from the bottom up to the UI. I'm looking for books that would also illustrate "outside-in", as Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests.
Profile Image for Erika RS.
849 reviews259 followers
January 24, 2013
Finished test-driven development: A Practical Guide by David Astels. The book contains three parts. Part 1 introduces the reader to test-driven development. Part 2 discusses various tools and techniques for doing TDD. Part 3 presents an extended example by going through the test-driven development of a movie rating application.

Test-driven development builds on the principle that developers should write tests before they write code. The tests determine the code that needs to be written. As a side effect, this results in a suite of programmer tests. However, the book stresses that TDD primarily exists as a development methodology, not a testing methodology. The test suite produced by this methodology should not be considered a replacement for through testing by those who have testing as their primary goal.

My detailed impressions of the book and test-driven development.

test-driven development: A Practical Guide provides a good introduction to test-driven development. It contains many useful insights and practical tips. However, I suspect that you can find more focused, up-to-date introductions to the topic than the one found in this book.
194 reviews5 followers
October 17, 2012
This book explores Test-Driven Development (TDD) through practical hand-on examples and a real project.
Recommended for programmers familiar with Java or any Object oriented programming language. Not a right choice for readers without programming background.
To read an extended summary of this book please visit my
business blog.



17 reviews
January 18, 2016
On the one hand, the book goes into detailed, step-by-step, even obvious examples of using unit testing properly. On the other hand, the tedium makes for most of the volume of the book, and the points are still hammered home well after they have been understood.

I feel that most of the value in this book is also contained in any short series of Internet articles on TDD, and that it was mostly a waste to ordering that for work.
Profile Image for Keith.
2 reviews4 followers
February 23, 2008
Pretty good content, although it gets boring near the end (perhaps because I don't do GUI apps). I would have appreciated some examples of testing HTTP interactions, but still liked the book overall. A nice pairing with Test Driven Development: By Example.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews

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