Coder's Dojo: Acceptance Test-Driven Development in Python

Geoffrey Bache (Jeppesen Systems)

Hands On · Testing

Thursday, 08:30, 3 hours 30 minutes | Meeting Room 15

The Coder's Dojo is a useful format for teaching and learning programming skills, and particularly for learning about test-driven development. It is built around the concepts of learning by doing and the way in which Judo is taught and learnt by practicing "Kata" exercises. We have used this format in a variety of situations and believe it to be a fun and productive way to see how things work in practice. This workshop uses the Dojo format to explore the idea of driving development from acceptance tests, (rather than unit tests), while coding using the Python language. We believe that Test Driven Development is an essential skill for agile developers and that this workshop will introduce the subject from a slightly different angle to usual. Since we will be coding in Python it will also expose workshop participants to this powerful and expressive language.

Geoff Bache is an experienced software developer and XP coach, working for Jeppesen Systems (part of the Boeing Group) in Gothenburg, Sweden. He has been working with various forms of automated testing since 1998. In recent years he has been developing (in Python) the acceptance test tool "TextTest" and the Python GUI recorder/replayer "PyUseCase". He is a veteran of the European XP200* conferences, originally presenting papers at both XP2003 and XP2004. At XP2005, he co-ran two workshops on acceptance testing with Rick Mugridge (of the Fit tool) and Brian Swan (of the Exactor tool). Since then, he has presented tutorials at both Europython 2005 and XP2006.