Author/s : Steve Freeman, Nat Pryce
Publisher : Addison-Wesley Professional
Category :
Project Management, Process and Best Practices
Review by : Jeanne Boyarsky
Rating : 9 horseshoes
The person who handed me this book said it was "better than Lasse's book" (
Test Driven.) I disagree. One can't compare the two books - Test Driven is meant for beginners and this book is meant for an advanced audience. If you have never written unit tests before, this book is very hard to follow. So put it down, get an intro book and come back.
I really liked the emphasis on making the software responsive to change along with separating acceptance and unit tests. The book uses
Junit 4.6 and therefore covers Hamcrest matchers for both JUnit and JMock. I like the authors cover best practices, good design and clearly indicate what is a personal preference. I really liked part 4's emphasis on things that are hard to test at a higher level than "extract method."
The only thing that prevents me from giving full marks, is the case study. While I did read this part in one sitting, it was still hard to follow. There was a lot of information to keep in mind while trying to focus on the lessons of the example. I also think it was admirable for the authors to use a Swing example since Swing is harder to test. However, Swing is also less common for
Java developers to use actively adding another block to understanding the software growing/testing aspects. And it is even harder for non-Java developers who are in the target audience for the book.
Except for the case study, I thought the book was amazing. And I'm sure the case study is a matter of taste.
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Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in
exchange for writing this review on behalf of CodeRanch.
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