February 7, 2008
Another declarative programming language to try to test
At the Alt.NET UK conference there was a good deal of discussion about tactics to test declarative languages such as XAML in WPF applications. Well it seems we have another one coming out of the Oslo project - ‘D’. Looks like there is no escape, testing of declarative languages is going to be a ripe area to develop tools and techniques.
February 5, 2008
Developer Testing - Discussion at ALT.NET UK
I thought I’d blog about some of the topics that were discussed at ALT.NET UK, or more correctly my views on those topics. Styles Of Testing I’ve blogged about the fact that I tend not to use interaction testing much. I find interaction testing can result in overspecified software and sometimes in tests that are hard to read. To be fair some of this could be countered by better use of mocking, for example diffrentiating between mocks and stubs (or Stubs and Expecations if thats the terminology
February 4, 2008
Classicist vs. Mockist Test-Driven Development
One thing that came up in a couple of sessions of Altnetconf UK was the old saw of classicist vs. mockist approaches to TDD. Martin Fowler has a great, and updated, article on the distinction between the two approaches here. Now I have to confess to being a classicist. I tried being a mockist, but I gave it up because of the dangers of over-specified software. Now I tend to favor test doubles for the areas that are difficult to get under test otherwise as per Michael Feathers. We are also much…
BDD - I think I'm finally getting some understanding
Nick Hines from Thoughtworks led a really good session on BDD at ALT.NET UK. The session clarified a lot of things for me, though as always after a bit of thought I am left with plenty more questions so I thought a blog entry was in order. What Is BDD My initial experience with BDD was Dave Astels doing a videocast about it. Better TDD and focussing on design were the name of the game. This made sense but when I started looking into it more I got a bit lost. The documentation seems to focus on
Altnetconf UK
Well we’re done. I’ll post fuller reflections another time, but overall, the event went better than the organisers could have hoped. Feedback from all the delegates we spoke to was positive. For everyone, the contributory nature of an Open Spaces event was a refreshing change from the usual passive experience of events, and the level of discourse was high and exceptionally well-informed. We probably got some things right (giving the Brits a chance to break the ice over a few beers after settin
alt.net - Some comments and ideas
I’ve been holding back from commenting as there’s been a lot happening and I probably need a few more days before my mind is set, both on the technicalities we discussed, on the process, and on the ideas. For today I’ll focus on the alt.net movement, and on the conference. I’l leave the technical stuff for later. Communities, user groups and is the existing structure working for alt.net There’s been strong suggestions that user groups are enough to cover the scope of alt.net. The concepts behi
February 3, 2008
Alt.Net.UK - Post Conference Roundup
This weekend was the Alt.Net.UK conference in London and I’m really pleased to say that it was a huge success.  A huge thank you to everyone who attended, I think the official count was 53, as it was you guys who made it the success it was.  Another huge thank you goes to Michelle, Sam and Danni from Conchango who was on hand throughout the day providing food, drinks and generally being great!  Another huge thank you to Red Gate who put money behind the bar on the Friday night and providing…
February 2, 2008
Test Spy - Replacing Domain Services
At the recent discussion of mocking at ALT.NET UK we discussed using test spies. We actually make good use of test spies now and they have some advantages. Let me give you an example where they come in handy. Our domain classes occassionally need to contact external services, interfaces implemented by these services are put in the domain (seperated interface) with the implementations available to the domain using a Service Locator. What do to when testing though, we have maybe 1% of the the te
ALT.NET UK
Wir hatten am Freitagabend so viele Themen gesammelt dass es für vier parallele Sessions gereicht hat. Ich beschreibe im folgenden kurz an welchen Sessions ich teilgenommen habe. Session 1 In der ersten Session ging es um die Frage, inwieweit Testdriven Development (TDD) und die dabei eingesetzten Tools Designentscheidungen einschränken. Roy Osherove argumentiert, dass TDD dazu führen kann Dependency Injection einzusetzen um eine Klasse testen zu können (indem sie von den internen Abhängigkeit
First Alt.Net.UK Conference thoughts
I am sitting on the train heading north. After deciding trying to stream the England/Wales match from iPlayer on the train WiFi was probably not a good idea, especially after just reading the score, I though I should write about the Alt.Net UK Conference; a very interesting experience. It is great to meet so many people who are so enthusiastic over their jobs and learning how to do it better. There were some faces I knew from DDD and other community events, but also many new faces. I was…
ALT.NET UK Konferenz in London gestartet
ALT.NET UK Konferenz in London gestartet February 2nd, 2008 Gestern Abend haben sich die Teilnehmer der ALT.NET Konferenz in London getroffen um Vorschläge zum Inhalt der Konferenz zu sammeln. Die Konferenz wird Open Space organisiert. Wer, wie ich, zum ersten mal eine Open Space Konferenz erlebt fragt sich wie das gehen soll. Wir standen also alle zusammen, stellten uns kurz vor, und dann wurden Themen gesammelt. Die Dynamik dieser Runde war spitze! Jeder der zu einem Thema etwas anzubieten
alt.net Conference day 1
My hotmail is back apparently… we’ll never know what happened. At the alt.net conference this morning… Early start after a very late evening. There are damn smart people in here, very uplifting. Here’s the sessions I’m going to attend: REST / SOAP / MVC and what it all means for services Mocking, is it a good idea? (you know it’s one of my pet peeves) How to become a better developer and spread the alt.net ideas DSL and fluent interfaces… They’re the bits I proposed in each of the top
January 30, 2008
Alt.Net.UK Conference - More Information
The conference is almost upon us and we just wanted to post some more information about what’s going to happen. Friday 1) Topic / Agenda Discussion on Friday 1st Feb between 18:00-19:30 @ Conchango, 36 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9EU 2) Drinks at Bankside Restaurant & Bar on Friday 1st Feb 19:30-23:00 @ 32 Southwark Bridge Rd, London, SE1 9EU Saturday 3) Alt.Net.UK Conference Saturday 2nd Feb 09:30-17:30 @ Conchango, 36 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9EU The plan is to h
January 29, 2008
Alt.Net.UK Conference - More Information
The conference is almost upon us and we just wanted to post some more information about what’s going to happen. Friday 1) Topic / Agenda Discussion on Friday 1st Feb between 18:00-19:30 @ Conchango, 36 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9EU 2) Drinks at Bankside Restaurant & Bar on Friday 1st Feb 19:30-23:00 @ 32 Southwark Bridge Rd, London, SE1 9EU Saturday 3) Alt.Net.UK Conference Saturday 2nd Feb 09:30-17:30 @ Conchango, 36 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9EU The plan is to h
Keeping in touch with Altnetconf UK
Those of you who can’t attend Altnetconf UK may still want to keep in touch with what we are up to during the day. We have three mechanisms to help you do that: First, Dave Verwer, has set up a newsriver for us where you will be able to pick up AltNetUK tagged posts. Second, we intend to update a wiki with session summaries on the day. We are thinking of using some pages on altnetpedia to do this. Third, we hope to have some video of the proceedings, after the event. For those of you who