Helping companies tackle legacy code, and other software development musings
This post was written for the NCrunch blog. You can find the original here. Unit tests help developers write better code and provide a faster way of getting feedback compared to testing manually. But unit tests are also another piece of code that must be maintained and taken care of. Unit tests can become a […]
This post was written for the NCrunch blog. You can find the original here. There are many ways of testing your application or library. The test pyramid provides a good starting point to the most common types of tests—unit tests, integration tests, end-to-end tests, and manual tests. But there are other types of tests, like […]
I’ve written multiple posts about legacy code and automated tests. I believed both are closely connected in that one can help solve the other. I also enjoy working on legacy code, improving software development practices and improving code quality. But this blog has always been geared towards developers, and it seems managers don’t always follow. […]
As an independent consultant, I work for companies large and small. But I (lightly) engage in some open source work, from submitting bugs over creating pull requests to maintaining my own RedStar.Amounts library. The open source community has some best practices that are often missing in companies. Here are some that I recommend you try […]
This post was written for the NCrunch blog. You can find the original here. Test-driven development is a technique to drive the development of your project. TDD enables you to verify your code, it provides confidence for refactoring, and it enables a cleaner architecture. But what if you already have an existing codebase that wasn’t developed with […]
This post was written for the NCrunch blog. You can find the original here. When you dive into automated testing and test-driven development, it won’t take long before you learn about the testing pyramid. If you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry. I’ll explain what it is first, then go into some variants, and finally […]
This post was written for the NCrunch blog. You can find the original here. In 2018, just about every developer has at least heard of test-driven development. But that doesn’t mean every team is doing it or that every project has an extensive suite of tests. It doesn’t even mean everyone likes it or believes […]
This post was written for the NCrunch blog. You can find the original here. I once worked at a client site where the technical lead told me not to waste time writing tests. Speed was important and writing tests was a waste of time. Besides the fact that that’s a fallacy (I write code better […]
This post was written for the NCrunch blog. You can find the original here. When you first start writing unit tests, all is well and the few tests run in a matter of seconds. After having written hundreds or thousands of tests, running them might take…long. Too long. But when is long too long? How […]
I’ve sung the praise of TDD/automated testing many times before, but recently encountered an angle I hadn’t considered yet: the importance of automated tests for onboarding. Automated tests have several benefits: if you’re practicing TDD, it generally drives your design in a good direction it provides a safety net for refactoring it can catch bugs […]