First Steps into Test Driven Development with Red Green Refactor

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:25:00 -0700

I (finally) took my first dive into test driven development (TDD) with a personal project I recently started. I admit, the first thought that came to mind when I first read about the red/green/refactor process included a man, flannel, and duct tape. ;-) I decided to use MXUnit for my unit test framework. Using the Eclipse plugin made running the tests very easy. Instead, the hardest part for me was fighting the impulse to just write code. Red/green/refactor is all about first writing the test, watching it fail, then writing the code. Test, fail, code, and repeat until the test passes. Several times I caught myself writing code outside of the confines of the current test case. It was far too tempting to listen to the little voice that says, "It will be easy to add this feature too. The template is open anyway." Writing the tests first was also a challenge. I had to sit back and really think about what behaviors and data my user bean would contain. I actually had to formulate a plan before coding! Time to practice what I preach about on almost a daily basis at my paying job. I have yet to get to a true refactor stage, but I imagine it will be soon. It is too early in the unit testing and coding phase to have enough code to refactor.

Phillip's ColdFusion Blog - TDD

First Steps into Test Driven Development with Red Green Refactor