Agile

An Introduction to NHibernate

Eric Hexter — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 00:35:00 GMT

I just posted the demo and presentation from the Austin .Net Users Group to the web site. ADNUG.org. Weston Binford & Reddy Rajanala gave a great presentation and they made their slide deck and demo available. Check it out here http://www.adnug.org/downloads.aspx

Eric Hexter

Custom CCNET Branch - New Features That Could Not Wait!

Eric Hexter — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 23:20:00 GMT

Jay Flowers has put some great features into Cruise Control.Net. They include filters around integration; and the feature I am most interested in is the Force Build Filter. I have committed to getting his changes into the main CC.net truck so that it can make it into the next version. Check out the details on Jay's site.

http://jayflowers.com/WordPress/?p=72

Eric Hexter - www.hexterconsulting.com - Hexter Tools

Applying Test Driven Development to an existing application.

Eric Hexter — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 02:16:00 GMT

Adopting TDD has been an enlightening experience. I have found that doing things the right way usually seems to be the hard way. Or at least you have to take your lumps when applying TDD to an application that was initially developed without TDD.

I have been reading a book that could quite possible have the worst title I have ever heard. This book cannot stand on its title alone. The only reason I am reading it is because it was recommended to me by someone who I trust. I believe this is a book that will sell only by word of mouth. Working Effectively with Legacy Code is a book that explains how to get existing code into a test harness. You might be reading this and thinking I must need help tying my shoes in the morning as well. If I need a book to teach me how to create a unit test, then I obviously must be unable to function in society, right? Not true when it comes to existing applications which were written before applying Test Driven Development principles. The honest truth is that doing Test Driven Development on a new project is much easier than trying to apply it to an existing project. I have found that most of our existing architecture (which is based on commerce server and its horrible starter solutions) have been extremely difficult (almost impossible) to get into a unit test. So much of the base objects have such deep dependencies on commerce server and the System.Web.HttpContext, that we have had to take some drastic steps to break our existing design and refactoring code just so that we can start to add tests to our system. I believe it will be well worth it, but it is not for the mild or the meek. It will be a long, hard road for us but ultimately we will be better off making the change. If you are adopting TDD and do not have the luxury of only working on new code, then go to Amazon and buy this book: Working Effectively with Legacy Code .

TDD here we come.

Eric Hexter — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 14:25:00 GMT

We have (the company I work for) ... as an organization decided to implement Test Driven Development (TDD). I will be posting the weekly struggles and successes we encounter as we learn what this means for the people, processes, and tools that provide solutions to our business.

The initial struggle has been working through all of the concepts, patterns, and tools needed to support TDD. Implementing a methodology like TDD is consists of much more then creating some unit tests for your code. I plan on addressing what I learn as they come up and augment some documentation along the way. I already have some ideas for my first few posts including how to apply TDD to an existing project that has horrific dependencies to 3rd party frameworks.