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  • Careful With Your Coverage Metrics

    Christian Gruber takes some time to clarify the TDD stance on using code coverage metrics. He discusses what code coverage metrics do and don't tell you, how TDD fits into the picture, and how one might be best advised to use their code coverage metrics.

  • The Power of Done

    Scott Schimanski recently added his voice to those talking about the power of a clear definition of "done." Scott points out there is both business and personal value in a well-defined meaning of "done". The business can count on shipping features that are done, without making any additional investment, while individuals really seem to enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes with "done."

  • What are the Qualities of a Good Test?

    What is a good test? How do we know if we're writing good tests? Kent Beck, Roy Osherove, Mike Hill and others provide some insight.

  • When is Ok to Break the Rules

    In “Just Ship Baby” Kent Beck, author of the JUnit Framework, reminds us that the point of all the Agile processes and practices is to produce shipping software. If they’re getting in the way of shipping software – then perhaps you need to break the rules.

  • A Fresh Look at 'Technical Debt'

    A Technical Debt Workshop was recently held to improve our industry's understanding of and approach to "technical debt", resulting in some interesting ideas. Among them, changing our perception of the problem to focus on "assets" rather than "debt", an idea now receiving quite a bit of attention by people such as Michael Feathers and Brian Marick.

  • FIT/Fitnesse Fixture Gallery 2.0 Released

    Gojko's Fixture Gallery is a cookbook for FIT/Fitnesse fixtures and version 2.0 has been released with Java, C# and Python code samples.

  • Discussion: Leaner Tools To Better Prepare Undergrads?

    Greg Wilson challenged the aa-ftt community to support efforts to improve college graduates ability to deliver "product-quality code". Wilson's request primarily involves providing simplified versions of the tools used by professionals, such that they're digestible by undergraduate students.

  • Cyclomatic Complexity Revisited

    Enerjy studied tens of thousands of source code files and found the optimum Cyclomatic Complexity number is 11, with a 28% defect probability. In fact, you are more likely to encounter a defect if you have lower complexity - is it time to make your methods are more complicated?

  • Fixture Gallery, a New Quick Reference For FitNesse How-To

    Fixture Gallery is a new open doc cookbook by Gojko Adzic for FIT/FitNesse tests. It provides developers with a quick overview of the most important fixture types and concepts for agile acceptance testing using the FIT framework.

  • DbFit 1.0 With Enhanced Querying Capabilities and User Docs

    Gojko Adzic has recently announced the version 1.0 release of DbFit, his popular FIT/FitNesse extension used for practicing TDD on database code.

  • Should the Customer Care about Agile?

    The involvement of customer in an Agile project is taken for granted, however in many situations, intentionally or unintentionally, the customer may not follow the Agile practices. An interesting discussion on the Extreme Programming group tries to decipher the situation and find possible solutions.

  • LINQ Framework Design Guidelines

    Now that LINQ has been finalized and released, it is time to start thinking about the ways to use it. Keith Farmer even talks about using it eliminate subclasses. But before we get into that, let us take a look at the official guidance from Microsoft.

  • Design and Code Reviews : The Good, Bad and Ugly

    Kirk Knoernschild shares his thoughts about Design and Code reviews. He mentions that such reviews promise to improve software quality, ensure compliance with standards, and serve as a valuable teaching tool for developers. However, the way they are performed affects their value. In some organizations they might really add whereas in others a review might just be a part of the bureaucracy.

  • Debate about Testing and Recoverability: Object Oriented vs. Functional Programming Languages

    In his latest blog post, Michael Feathers argued that object oriented programming languages offer some built-in features that facilitate testing and are therefore more recovery friendly than functional languages. Proponents of functional languages expressed strong disagreement with this statement, which provoked a very passionate debate in the blog community.

  • Cockburn on Testing: Real Programmers have GUTs

    In a moment of relaxation, Alistair Cockburn had the insight that we may be quibbling over inconsequentialities: "test before" or "test after," what's important to professional programmers is Good Unit Tests. Eureka!

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