Test Driven Development By Example - Kent Beck

After hearing about TDD and going through a class on TDD I was very eager to see what this book could offer. After finishing it this past week, I can honestly say it was a very good book ... but I still need experience more than anything.

The book is broken up into 3 main parts: 1) straightforward TDD example involving currency conversion code in Java, 2) a much more thought provoking example writing a xUnit testing framework from scratch in Python and using it to test itself, and 3) a large collection of "patterns" for development, design, testing, etc.

Overall I thought the book was very good and presented a lot of topics in a straight forward and engaging manor. The only problem I had with the book, really with the topic, is that it is hard to follow the examples without sitting with a person while they do it. Numerous times, if the author had been sitting with me as he types, I would have asked simple questions about what just happened, why we did something, or what some bit of code looked like from a few pages back ... all of which can and were answered in the book, but not without flipping many pages and trying to keep the whole code base straight in my head.

I especially enjoyed the example in Python since its a language I am currently trying to learn, and it showed some of the constructs that Python has to offer over other static languages like Java in an easy to digest manor.

All in all a definite recommended read .... although I can tell that experience is what is going to drive this particular skill (as is the case most of the time). I can follow along with the author's decisions and understand his logic for the most part ... but I don't feel confident I could or would come to the same ones given the chance.