Or more formally known as Beck’s TDD, is a very lucid book, in the sense that I’ve read it in one swell foop. It took me from morning, through eye-drying moments, to late evening, but I just couldn’t stop reading it.
This book is mostly fun, and you get the side-values of learning a lot of important lessons in TDD and development in general.
Just as a brain teaser, Beck philosophically speculates that flexibility only comes where you need change, this is his “triangulation” mantra.
[spoiler alert]
In short, it means that to implement a function that adds two numbers, we write a test:
Assert(4, add(2,2))
And we implement it as:
function add(a b): return 4
How well do we know the add function? from kinder garden we also know that 3+4 = 7 so we re-implement:
Assert(4, add(2,2))
Assert(7, add(3,4))
And we “triangulate” the code:
function add(a b): return a+b
We applied the minimal possible change to the code that makes the tests pass which means it is now as simple as it gets = elegant.
We took things in baby steps which means we have less margin for error.
We left little for speculation.
This is test-driven development.
Ofcourse, this book also gets my rare 10/10.
