Take note of this quote
I had the pleasure of meeting Gerard Meszaros, the author of the ever so hip “XUnit Test Patterns” book (which is in the Martin Fowler signature series…The CI Book is also a member, man) recently at a dinner hosted by Stelligent (my copasetic employer) and he said what I think is the quote of the year (so take note, man).
Because it’s his bag, in a conversation with roughly 30 people (over a fine meal consisting of fillet mignon among other tasty victuals) regarding Agile processes and the discipline required to maintain such agility, Gerard used the analogy that it is unacceptable for a doctor to go into an operating room without having scrubbed in (i.e. washing his/her hands); consequently, it should be impermissible for a developer to write code without having written some tests (ideally unit tests) for said code.
In fact, Darryl Taft of eWeek (who was also in attendance) captured Gerard’s words succinctly in his article “Agile Brings Professionalism to Software Development“:
“Not scrubbing before you go into surgery is a no-no, and not writing unit tests is not acceptable.”
Check out Darryl’s article and the next time you let it all hang out and fail to write a test for the nasty mess of code, you had better hope if you ever are cut open that the cutter washed their hands in advance, man!
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Thursday 23 Aug 2007 | Developer Testing