Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests Beck Signature: Amazon.co.uk: Steve Freeman, Nat Pryce: Books

Product Description

Foreword by Kent Beck

"The authors of this book have led a revolution in the craft of programming by controlling the environment in which software grows.” --Ward Cunningham

“At last, a book suffused with code that exposes the deep symbiosis between TDD and OOD. This one's a keeper.” --Robert C. Martin

“If you want to be an expert in the state of the art in TDD, you need to understand the ideas in this book.”--Michael Feathers

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is now an established technique for delivering better software faster. TDD is based on a simple idea: Write tests for your code before you write the code itself. However, this "simple" idea takes skill and judgment to do well. Now there's a practical guide to TDD that takes you beyond the basic concepts. Drawing on a decade of experience building real-world systems, two TDD pioneers show how to let tests guide your development and “grow” software that is coherent, reliable, and maintainable.

Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce describe the processes they use, the design principles they strive to achieve, and some of the tools that help them get the job done. Through an extended worked example, you’ll learn how TDD works at multiple levels, using tests to drive the features and the object-oriented structure of the code, and using Mock Objects to discover and then describe relationships between objects. Along the way, the book systematically addresses challenges that development teams encounter with TDD--from integrating TDD into your processes to testing your most difficult features. Coverage includes

• Implementing TDD effectively: getting started, and maintaining your momentum

throughout the project

• Creating cleaner, more expressive, more sustainable code

• Using tests to stay relentlessly focused on sustaining quality

• Understanding how TDD, Mock Objects, and Object-Oriented Design come together

in the context of a real software development project

• Using Mock Objects to guide object-oriented designs

• Succeeding where TDD is difficult: managing complex test data, and testing persistence

and concurrency

From the Back Cover

Foreword by Kent Beck

"The authors of this book have led a revolution in the craft of programming by controlling the environment in which software grows.” --Ward Cunningham

“At last, a book suffused with code that exposes the deep symbiosis between TDD and OOD. This one's a keeper.” --Robert C. Martin

“If you want to be an expert in the state of the art in TDD, you need to understand the ideas in this book.”--Michael Feathers

• Implementing TDD effectively: getting started, and maintaining your momentum

throughout the project

• Creating cleaner, more expressive, more sustainable code

• Using tests to stay relentlessly focused on sustaining quality

• Understanding how TDD, Mock Objects, and Object-Oriented Design come together

in the context of a real software development project

• Using Mock Objects to guide object-oriented designs

• Succeeding where TDD is difficult: managing complex test data, and testing persistence

and concurrency

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

16 reviews

4.9 out of 5 stars

Write a customer review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

Finally an advanced TDD book 20 Nov 2009

By Gojko Adzic

Format:Paperback

Growing Object Oriented Software, Guided by Tests, by Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce is a TDD book, but unlike any other on the market today. First of all, the book deals mostly with advanced unit testing topics, such as designing tests for readability and mocking, and addresses many common stumbling points that people experience with unit testing a few years after they started their journey, such as applying unit testing in multi-threaded and asynchronous environments. Second, it explains and demonstrates in practice the dynamics of designing software through TDD, which is still a dark art for many programmers. And third, it gives the reader insight into Freeman's and Pryce's brains, which is why this book is a must-read for anyone serious about unit testing, even to people that have been doing it in the last century.

Given the authors' backgrounds, it's not surprising that this book has a lot to say about using mock object libraries. Mock objects are arguably the most misunderstood and misused concept in software development today, so this book should be a valuable resource for most software development teams. In the part dealing with mock objects you will find strategies for using them successfully for software design, guidelines what to mock and what not to mock and lots of examples how all that looks in code.

The book isn't written in the usual imperative way ("you should use this because of...") but reads much more as an experience report ("we use this because of"). This might be unusual at first but I really like it, as it puts the things into a much more different perspective. Many of the topics addressed by this book are quite controversial and the authors have wisely chosen the voice to avoid any notion of preaching. I found myself disagreeing with parts, especially around bundling acceptance and end-to-end testing together. However, as the material doesn't preach but tell what the authors are thinking about, this did not bother me at all.

All in all, an excellent book. Grab a copy now.

Comment |

Was this review helpful to you?

Yes

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

An Excellent Coverage of TDD Principles 4 Dec 2009

By Jason Hales

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Some of the other reviewers are referring to this book as 'advanced'. I think it's advanced if you're relatively new to TDD. It would certainly help if you're a competent developer (which is probably why you're looking at TDD anyway), but it's 'advanced' if you want to change the way that you develop software.

It's a good read and I found quite a few "aha" paragraphs (my copy's now punctuated with permanently folded corners/post it notes).

It's nicely written without sounding arrogant. I think it's quite a hard topic to cover without getting bogged down in the minutiae of whys and wherefores of decisions, which it covers at exactly the right level

My only criticism is that I found it wee bit annoying the way it referred to the latter worked example when introducing an aspect of TDD, forcing me to skip back and forth a bit - but I think that's just a personal book reading preference.

I'm not sure how much an experienced TDD practioner would gain from it (except to see some of your own thoughts mirrored in black and white), but would very much recommend it to those new or getting started with TDD, wishing to `do it right'

Although the code samples are in Java it is applicable to other languages, such as C#, as the concepts are language independent

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

Demonstrates Evolutionary Design 15 Jan 2010

By Liz Sedley

This book is excellent, showing you not only how to do great TDD, but also how to do great design.
I would recommend it to all programmers out there who can read Java.
(The one caveat is that the book is all in Java, and so if you find reading Java hard you won't get as much out of the book.)

Steve and Nat walk you though a non-trivial example over many chapters which allows you to see how they think and how they write code.
Of course they use evolutionary design. So if you haven't got much experience with evolutionary design this book will show you how it works in practice.

TDD has improved and evolved over the years, making many of the earlier books on TDD seem outdated.

This books is full of personality and show how Steve and Nat approach TDD today.

I liked the state transition diagrams they used to visualise the system, and show which bits have been tested, and which bit is currently being worked on.