Category Archives: process

Cyber Dojo for teaching TDD

I’ve been teaching “Agile Projects” (yes, the title does feel a bit strange) to undergraduate students for a few years, and I’ve always took that opportunity to spend half a day on TDD. That meant me demo’ing a test-first implementation … Continue reading

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Test with a test framework idiomatic to your programming language

Code in Java, test in Java. With JavaScript, test in JavaScript. Ideally with a test framework that lets you write your unit tests in a way that does not feel contrived or constrained compared to writing production code. For example, … Continue reading

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Create hidden files in Apache VFS with the RAM filesystem type

Apache VFS is a great way to access different file systems in the same way. I particularly like the custom RAM filesystem in my unit tests in order to check code that eventually accesses the actual file system. For example: … Continue reading

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Worse than static methods or final classes?

Do you know what’s worse that static methods or classes marked as final? I’ll tell you what’s worse: static methods that return final classes. That only provides private constructors. Here I was, merrily testing my way through a piece of … Continue reading

Posted in java, tdd | 4 Comments

Java’s varargs are for unit tests

At Devoxx last week, Joshua Bloch argued during his talk “The Evolution of Java: Past, Present, and Future” that varargs are only “somewhat useful”. I think he is overlooking some usages, particularly in tests. Here is my case.

Posted in conferences, java, tdd | 2 Comments

Play Framework and Guice: use providers in Guice modules

Play Framework has a Guice module. Unfortunately, its use is fairly limited compared to what Guice can do. In this post, I describe how it is configured on my current personal project.

Posted in java, test | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Why aren’t there more Agile luminaries developing and selling software?

Have you noticed that few Agile luminaries earn a living from writing and selling software? Many do write code as consultants. Other are respected authors of non-commercial open-source development tools. Some do work for software companies such as RallyDev or … Continue reading

Posted in agile | 13 Comments

Bob Martin on TDD in Clojure

Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin has just blogged on the differences in TDD styles using Clojure, as compared to more traditional languages such as Java. Though I am a Clojure-newbie, I mostly disagree with his conclusions. His main point is that, … Continue reading

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Faster tests, at CITCON Paris 2009

“Going nowhere fast” by Nathan The session on Faster Tests (led by David) was interesting, at least to the extend that it was quite clear that we at Algodeal are not doing too bad indeed (Douglas Squirrel from youDevise is another one … Continue reading

Posted in citcon, test | 1 Comment

Interviewed by François Beauregard

François Beauregard from Pyxis Technologies interviewed me during Agile 2009 for their Vox Agile podcast. The interview is now online. We chatted about a favorite topic of mine: how to expand the horizons for Agile. My point is mostly that … Continue reading

Posted in agile, agile2009 | 1 Comment

[Agile 2009] Hudson-related presentations

Going to Agile 2009? Cannot get enough Hudson? I have put together a list of sessions at the conference that will explicitly mention the best CI server eveeeer ;-): Java Power Tools – getting it all together by John Smart,  … Continue reading

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“Is Scrum Evil?” Beyond our session at XP Day Paris

Our session “Is Scrum Evil?” at XP Day Paris this year went well. Attendance was good (50 people or so). One participant called it an “eye opener“. Two recorded the discussion (one of the records is available, in French, here; … Continue reading

Posted in scrum, xpday | 6 Comments

Refactoring applied to features (or YAGNIAM – You Aren’t Gonna Need It… Any More)

Refactoring code without modifying its external behavior is necessary to keep your code base manageable. That is nowadays a well-established fact. However, it can only go so far to prevent your code base from swelling permanently. In theory, if your … Continue reading

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Is Fit Dead? A debate on Twitter

Influential members of the Agile community recently discussed the current state and history of Fit (the original thing, not Fitnesse or other Fit-inspired tools). The conversation took place on Twitter mostly on Tuesday, March 3rd and Wednesday, March 4th. Here is … Continue reading

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Fitnesse now supports versioning to SCMs!

I really like how Fitnesse is doing these days (I even subscribed to the mailing list, which I had not considered last year, for example). Bob Martin is adding features every few weeks. It is great! In the release he … Continue reading

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