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Avatars of Test Driven Development (TDD)

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

It’s easy to speak of test-driven development as if it were a single method, but there are several ways to approach it. In my experience, different approaches lead to quite different solutions.

In this hands-on workshop, with the help of some concrete examples, I’ll demonstrate the different styles and more importantly what goes into the moment of decision when a test is written? And why TDDers make certain choices. The objective of the session is not to decide which approach is best, rather to highlight various different approaches/styles of practicing test-driven development.

By the end of this session, you will understand how TTDers break down a problem before trying to solve it. Also you’ll be exposed to various strategies or techniques used by TDDers to help them write the first few tests.

Avatars of Test Driven Development (TDD) from Naresh Jain

Posted in Agile, Design, Programming, Testing | No Comments »

Outside In – Behaviour Driven Development (BDD)

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

Recently at the Agile India 2013 Conference I ran an introductory workshop on Behavior Driven Development. This workshop offered a comprehensive, hands-on introduction to behavior driven development via an interactive-demo.

Over the past decade, eXtreme Programming practices like Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) have fundamentally changed software development processes and inherently how engineers work. Practitioners claim that it has helped them significantly improve their collaboration with business, development speed, design & code quality and responsiveness to changing requirements. Software professionals across the board, from Internet startups to medical device companies to space research organizations, today have embraced these practices.

This workshop explores the foundations of TDD & BDD with the help of various patterns, strategies, tools and techniques.

Outside In – Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) from Naresh Jain

Posted in Agile, Continuous Deployment, Design, Programming | No Comments »

Inverting the Testing Pyramid

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

As more and more companies are moving to the Cloud, they want their latest, greatest software features to be available to their users as quickly as they are built. However there are several issues blocking them from moving ahead.

One key issue is the massive amount of time it takes for someone to certify that the new feature is indeed working as expected and also to assure that the rest of the features will continuing to work. In spite of this long waiting cycle, we still cannot assure that our software will not have any issues. In fact, many times our assumptions about the user’s needs or behavior might itself be wrong. But this long testing cycle only helps us validate that our assumptions works as assumed.

How can we break out of this rut & get thin slices of our features in front of our users to validate our assumptions early?

Most software organizations today suffer from what I call, the “Inverted Testing Pyramid” problem. They spend maximum time and effort manually checking software. Some invest in automation, but mostly building slow, complex, fragile end-to-end GUI test. Very little effort is spent on building a solid foundation of unit & acceptance tests.

This over-investment in end-to-end tests is a slippery slope. Once you start on this path, you end up investing even more time & effort on testing which gives you diminishing returns.

In this session Naresh Jain will explain the key misconceptions that has lead to the inverted testing pyramid approach being massively adopted, main drawbacks of this approach and how to turn your organization around to get the right testing pyramid.

Inverting The Testing Pyramid from Naresh Jain

Posted in Agile, Continuous Deployment, Deployment, Testing | No Comments »

Agile India 2013 Conference Pictures

Wednesday, March 13th, 2013

Posted in Agile, agile india, Conference | No Comments »

Inline Comments in the Code is a Smell, but Document the Why

Thursday, March 7th, 2013

Is writing inline comments always bad? Are comments really evil? I keep getting these questions over and over again.

Often you see code like this:

// If the item is taxable, get the taxed amount using tax calculator
if( objItem.bTaxable )
{
	objItem.fTax = objCalculator.TaxForLocal(objItem.fItemRate);
}
 
// Additional tax is applicable if the item is an imported one
if( objItem.bImported )
{
	objItem.fTax += objCalculator.TaxForImported(objItem.fItemRate);
}
 
// Add tax to item rate
objItem.fTaxedRate = objItem.fItemRate + objItem.fTax;
 
// Return the final amount
double fFinalAmount = objItem.fTaxedRate * objItem.nNumberOfItems;
return fFinalAmount;

What is the real value of these comments?

When I see stuff like this, I usually tell people

When I was learning programming, I was thought that great programmers write great comments. These days I tell people lousy programmer write comments.

Immediately people who write inline-comments get defensive. And that’s completely understandably. I don’t think we’ve really explained our rationale for making such a ridiculous statement. So let me step back and explain the rationale.

Folks in the extreme-programming community will tell you:

Comments are often used as deodorant. Comments represent a failure to express an idea in the code. Try to make your code self-documenting or intention-revealing. When you feel like writing a comment, first try to refactor so that the comment becomes superfluous.

Most people will also tell you, that the biggest problem with comments is that they soon become outdated. The original intent of the person writing the comment was to help a developer who comes later to understand the code better. But unfortunately over a period of time, the comments get outdated and it adds more to the confusion. Speaking to many programmer, they simply delete or ignore the comments because they find them ambiguous. Even though the person who wrote the comments wrote them with a good intension, one needs to ask if it really solved any problem?

And then they question, why not put the same effort and time to write well-crafted code so that comments are never required? Is it impossible to do so?

While this argument is a good one, I find it hard to connivence people just based on this argument.

I’ve found the following approach work really well for me. First let’s understand why programmers write comments. Based on my experience, programmer write in-line comments for 3 different reasons:

To explain what the code does
To descrive how the code does what is does
Why the code is written the way its written

If you think about it, the “what” and “how” of the code should really be expressed by self-documented code. IMHO its simply a failure on part of the programmer if they cannot express the “what” and “how” in the code itself.

However the “why” is little bit more tricky. It’s a reminder, telling us: “Hey, you are doing something complicated and someone else will not understand why. Even if you wrote a comment, they might not necessarily understand it.” At this point I might stop and see if there is a better way to design/model/code this, such that the why becomes obvious via the code. This is certainly more challenging and time consuming than to write a comment and moving on. However this short-term hack might bite me back. Luckily, most often than not, I can find a way to avoid the comment. But there are special cases when I need a comment to explain the why. Let’s see a few examples:

There is a bug in the underlying framework/library I’m using. Searching on the net, I found the bug report and a workaround. Looking at just the code might not help someone understand the need for the workaround. Generally I would write a small comment saying Workaround with the version number of the framework/library and add the link to the workaround and continue. In future, someone can remove the workaround & delete the comment if the issue is fixed.
I’m implementing a complex algo and its not common that everyone understands it. I would add a link to the Algo description (rather than duplicating the algo description in the code. DRY principle applies to comments as well.) and continue with my coding.
And so on…

So think again before you leave a comment 😉

Posted in Agile, Code Smells, Programming | No Comments »

Agile India 2013 Conference Feedback

Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

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Posted in Agile, agile india, Conference | No Comments »

Agile India 2013 Conference Food Menu

Tuesday, February 19th, 2013

Lunch Menu

27th Feb – Indian	28th Feb – European	1st March – Oriental	2nd March – Italian
Soup	Soup	Soup	Soup
Drumstick Soup	Cabbage Chowder	Sweet Corn Veg Soup	Classic Ministroni

Salads	Salads	Salads	Salads
Kachumber Salad	Greek Salad	Spicy Glass Noodle Salad	Mix Grilled Vegetable Anti Pasti
Dahi Gujjia	Hawain Chicken Salad	Kimchi Salad	Mushroom Escabeche
Mix Bean Salad	Pasta Salad With Creamy Pesto	Oriental Veg Salad With Raw Pappaya	Cannalini Beanse Salad
Curd Rice/Papad/Pickle	Bread /Butter	Curd Rice/Papad/Pickle	Bread /Butter

Main Course	Main Course	Main Course	Main Course
Murgh Makhani	Grilled Chicken With Creamy Peppercorn Sauce	Kung Pao Chicken	Chicken Fiorenina
Malai Kofta	Lazagnia Vegetable	Stir Fry Tofu In Green Curry With Thai Basil	Vegetable Pot Au Feu
Paneer Butter Masala	Gratinated Potato	Stir Fried Vegetable In Black Bean Sauce	Carrot And Potato Lazagna
Aloo Muter	Three Bean Ragout	Cauliflower Manchurian	Egplant Parmangiana
		Schezuan Fried Rice	Spinach And Riccota Crispelle
Yellow Dal Tadka	Dal Panchamel	Arhal Dal Tadka	Hare Moong Dal
Makkai Pulao	Peas Pulao	Bhuna Pyaz Aur Pudina Ki Pulao	Onion Jeera Ki Pulao
Asst Indian Breads	Asst Indian Breads	Asst Indian Breads	Asst Indian Breads

Desserts	Desserts	Desserts	Desserts
Shahi Tukda	Mango Mouse/Chocolate Truffle	Pinapple Crumbkle	Tiramisu
Asst French Pastries	Mud Cake	Asst Mousses	Pineapple Pastries
Ice Cream With Condiments	Ice Cream With Condiments	Ice Cream With Condiments	Ice Cream With Condiments

Dinner Menu

28th Feb – International	1st March – Middle Eastern
Soup	Soup
Tom Yum Kai Soup	Soup E Murgh
Cream Of Tomato With Basil Pesto	Ash E Sabzi

Salads	Salads
German Style Pasta And Ham Salad	Hammus/Pita Bread
Tomato And Bocconcini Salad	Fetoush
Fattouch Salad	Babaganoch
Shakrkand Ki Chat	Burani Spinach
Semiya Bagala Bhath	Curd Rice
Papad/Pickle	Papad/Pickle

Main Course	Main Course
Gosht Awaadhi Korma	Iranian Mix Grill
Paneer Kundan Kaliyan	Vegetable Skewer On Saffron Rice
Gobhi Mutter Pudhinawali	Ghoresht Bamia
Spinach Corn Gratin	Vegetable Saloona
Dal Makhani	Komeh Sabzi
Subz Dum Biryani	Zereshk Polo
Hing Methi Ki Chote Aloo	Potato Gratine
Asst Indian Breads	Asst Indian Breads

Desserts	Desserts
Hot Chocolate Mud Pie	Om Ali
Seasonal Fresh Cut Fruits	Asst Melons
Kesar Rasamalai	Rosugolla
Ice Cream With Condiments	Ice Cream With Condiments

Snacks	Snacks
Aloo Mutter Samosa	Falafel
Muter Kismiss Ki Tikki	Shish Tawook
Fish Finger With Tartar Sauce	Spanokopita
Hariali Paneer Tikka	Kubedeh