A Test That Isn’t Automated Is a (fill in the blank)

Recently I ran into some problems with tests that could not easily be run in an automated manner.  In the spirit of a glass half full, I am trying to decide if manual tests are partially useful, partially useless, or totally useless. The kind of work that I do, laboratory automation, scientific instrumentation, medical devices, [...]

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TDD with C++

I know, it is 2010, and doing TDD with C++ probably isn’t trending too high on anyone’s hot topics list, but after a 8 year hiatus I find myself doing some Agile consulting with an embedded systems team that is using C++.   At first I was concerned about the transition.  What was I going to [...]

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Why TDD?

“When do you write your tests?” This is a question that I have been putting to developers lately and the answers I get back sometimes surprise me. I still hear a lot of people say they are writing their tests after the majority of the code is written. These are people who, by and large, [...]

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PyCon on the Charles – Part I

I have been doing some work with Python the last few months and recently joined a Python Meetup group in Cambridge that had a meeting last night at Microsoft NERD. The purpose of the meeting was a chance for some people who are presenting at PyCon to do a dry run on their presentations. The [...]

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Rethinking the C# using statement

I’ve typically used the C# using construct to wrap an instance on an object that has a short lifetime and requires a call to Dispose. The using keyword hides the need to call Dispose explicitly and avoids having to use a try-finally to ensure that Dispose is always called. One example of a class that [...]

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