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Deliver Your Code with Confidence Using Test-driven Development
by Samudra Gupta
Traditional software development methodologies incorporate a fairly long life cycle in coding, testing, and deployment. But test-driven development (TDD) is a new software development process that turns the traditional processes around by promoting writing tests before writing the functional code. This article examines what test-driven development is all about and explores how to effectively use it within a project.
What Is Test-driven Development?
Test-driven development is a major component of Xtreme programming. TDD is better explained as a process rather than defined as a concept. The process involves first writing a test and making sure that the test fails. In the second step, you write just enough code to make the test pass. Then, you run the test again and ensure that the test passes. If it fails, this highlights a problem with the functional code and you need to update the functional code to pass the test. Once this small test is over, you start over again with a different piece of test.
Conditions for Successful TDD
In order for TDD to work successfully, some processes need to be enforced and a favourable environment needs to be in place. In general, the conditions can be listed as follows:
- You must refuse to write code without a test in place.
- You write your own tests as opposed to any third party. Otherwise, the process will take so much longer that its time-scale could be compromised.
- The internal application design should be highly decoupled so that each module can be tested in isolation.
- Last but not the least, you'll need a mature unit testing framework in place.
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