TDD: Mind Your Language

One of the exercises I love to do in my TDD classes is to build a lightsaber in TDD. (Yes, of course that’s how they’re made). In the exercise, I go through listing all kinds of features and use cases,… Continue Reading…

Leading Indicators in Unit Testing Implementation, Part III

in the last post we talked about the failing builds trend as an indicator of success of implementation. The final metric we’ll look at, that can indicate how our process will go, is also related to broken builds. It is… Continue Reading…

Leading Indicators in Unit Testing Implementation, Part II

Part I was HUGE! Now, let’s look at broken builds. We want to see a decrease in their number over time. This may sound a bit strange. Our CI is supposed to tell us if the build breaks, that’s its… Continue Reading…

“Fractal Test Planning” Slides from #NTD2017

Great discussion and great fun! Here are the slides. [slideshare id=76765067&doc=fractaltestplanning-170608123218]

Implementing Unit Testing – Leading Indicators (part 1)

Now that we’ve talked about what we want to achieve, we better spread out some sensors. After all, we’re about to embark on a long and winding road. We want to know if we’re still going the right way, and… Continue Reading…

“Better Code for Better Tests” Slides from #LetsTest

Really sorry it’s the last Let’s Test. Great fun! Anyway, here are the slides. [slideshare id=75994166&doc=betercodeforbettertests-170515180216]

Over Exposure and Privacy Issues

This conversation comes up in every training I do about testing. I know exactly when it will happen. I know what I’m going to say, what they will say, and I know no one comes out completely convinced. Then violence… Continue Reading…

Unit Tests Anti-Pattern: Prefixing Test names With “test”

Unless the test framework makes you use the same “test” prefix, don’t do it. It messes with separating and identifying unit tests.

Unit tests Anti-pattern – Not Asserting

You’d think that we don’t need this kind of post in our day and age, but I still see unit tests written without the assert part.

Unit Tests Anti-pattern – Asserting on Not Null

Once people understand they actually need to write an assert, this unit tests anti-pattern appears almost immediately. Checking on null is a no-no.

Copyright Gil Zilberfeld, 2025