xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code

[CaseyLamers1]

Author: Gerald Meszaros

Submitted by: Casey Lamers

Link: http://www.amazon.com/xUnit-Test-Patterns-Refactoring-Code-ebook/dp/B00132S6V4/

Review:

At a certain point you are probably going to have to prove that your software meets requirements, it does what you say it will do. That means you will need to test your software. This book is about how to test software. At first pass I found this to be a rather dense book and hard to get into, but after I let it settle in my mind for a while I got a lot out of it. The book makes good use of diagrams to show the strategy which I found helpful, but it also has text based code examples (which I slog through because they aren't G code).

This book talks about how to design your software so that it is testable. Then it talks about different "Test Smells". I found this to be analogous to "Code Smells" that others have talked about.

Some Key Topics:

• Why Test?
• Test Smells
• Automated Testing
• xUnit testing
• Test Fixtures
• Test Doubles (mocks, stubs)
• A lot on Test Patterns

This book answers the what to test and how to test questions.

[Taggart]

Just finished reading this book. Lots of good content. Pretty much everything you need to know about Unit Testing. Does a great job of describing how to write testable code and how to manage all your tests as your project grows.

Not light reading and not geared towards beginners. To get the most out of it you should already be familiar with unit testing. 

Could be better organized and less repetitive.  Full of lots of distinctions without a difference.  Could be about 1/3 of its 900 pages and still cover everything adequately.  Spends way too much time discussing and justifying anti-patterns.

[Taggart]

I should add on the plus side, perhaps all the repetition is useful because towards the end I could predict what he was going to say next.  I guess that means I learned something.