Customer Reviews

xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code

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I've been familiar with agile concepts of automated unit testing (AUT) and test-driven development (TDD) for awhile now. In the past few years I've made several attempts at incorporating AUT and TDD into my own personal workflow, but each attempt soon resulted in my abandoning the whole idea. The testing effort quickly outweighed the benefits. I've believed in the ideal of TDD, but I didn't see quite how to pull it off.

Then I bought XUnit Test Patterns by Gerard Meszaros. Wow! Finally the issues I've struggled with are being addressed. Okay, I must admit I'm not very plugged in to the online software development community, and I'm sure these issues have been discussed before. But this book looks special. I sense it's giving voice to these issues in a big way that's introducing many developers to these ideas for the first time. After all, it had to take time for this kind of book to be written. Time for the patterns to be developed through hard and frustrating work.

Rarely have I bought a thick book on software development and eagerly read every single word from cover to cover. But I have with this book. And I know I'll soon do it again. I'm even tempted to also purchase the PDF version of the book, just so I can reference it wherever I happen to be.

It's not the final word on AUT, but it has me embracing the ideal of TDD once more. The company I work for develops a huge OO-based enterprise software system with no automated tests. As Meszaros explains, this kind of legacy system is the most difficult for incorporating AUT (and daunting for those new to AUT). But at least now I feel like we have a good chance.

This book is advertised as "three books in one" which I originally figured was just the usual publisher's marketing. But it really delivers in all three areas: introductory narratives, discussion of test code smells, and of course, the testing patterns themselves.

Even if you have done automated unit testing using any of the xUnit frameworks in the past, it will be useful to read the introductory narratives. Meszaros accomplishes the difficult task of clearly describing all of the aspects of xUnit including fixture management. I say "difficult", because it can be hard to document something that is so familiar that you do every day. Even though most of this content is not new, it provides clear terminology, which is valuable in making the rest of the book understandable.

Mezaros writes in a clear and highly detailed style and the book appears suprisingly free of typos and grammatical errors, which is a nice change for technical books.

Don't be scared by the size of the book. There isn't anything unnecessary here, and even the glossary is comprehensive and useful.

Highly recommended!

Length:: 5:43 Mins

This video explains xUnit Testing and gives an explanation of irrationality. The video shows how Amazon.ca's irrational delivery policies are justified, and how Amazon.ca is perfectly happy to lose customers in the interests of promoting poor customer service.