TDD !== TFP

The big learning for today was that test driven development (TDD) and test first programming (TFP) are not the same although may share some similarities, so much so I thought they where different terms for the same thing. Turns out they are not the same, and the internet is not reliable source of information.

TDD is emphasised here at holidaycheck, t-shirts and posters promoting TDD are a common sighting around the office. So that’s something to learn more about, apparently there is a lot to learn about TDD and I should be on the way to becoming an expert by now.

What to do

Give up, the internet doesn’t have the answers… there’s a book self here so I start searching through the books and there and find one with a chapter on TDD, The clean coder by Robert C Marten. Maybe that’ll help fill shine some light on over across the murky quagmire that is my understanding of test driven development. Come to think of it I’ve still actually not built a working piece of software using TDD, could be something to do to help gain an more experience as the tactile experience tends to be more effective than reading and writing about it.

Best try both and see what sticks, I’ve took a quick look ahead through learn-c-the-hard-way and in a couple of chapters time there’s an exercise with out any supplementary code provided by the author and instead a specification for a project that seem like a good place to start with an unfamiliar language.

What else have I been doing

Aside from spending a couple of hours trying to come up with a plan of action and writing this blog, and working through some exercises, conducted an a misguided presentation… which did allow for some conversion about my total lack of knowledge about TDD, TFP and best practices. I’ve also moved away from Jira for planning my week to Microsoft’s task.office… it’s mostly a kanban board similar to jira’s but without the complicated setup of permissions required. I think jira would be a more suitable tool for managing the work flow of a team rather than an individual.

Written by Marc McIntosh Find him on github