Workshop: Faster, More Effective Test-Driven Development

Are your tests slow and brittle? Do you get a sinking feeling when you need to refactor? Do you worry that your unit tests aren’t actually testing anything important? If so, you could benefit from writing tests that don’t use mock objects.

In this workshop, you’ll use Node.js to explore a cutting-edge approach to test-driven development (TDD) that doesn’t need mocks or end-to-end tests. We’ll re-examine test-driven development from first principles to create tests that are fast, effective, and easy to write. We’ll tackle real-world problems such as testing infrastructure, evolving mock-free designs from scratch, and working with existing mock-based designs.

You’ll learn the core principles of testing without mocks, the tradeoffs involved, what’s easier, and what’s harder. Because this course re-examines test-driven development from a new perspective, it’s suitable for both TDD beginners and experts. You’ll leave with a new bag of tricks for your toolkit and you’ll be ready to choose between a mock-based or mock-free approach depending on the needs of your code.

Target audience: Experienced programmers. Basic familiarity with JavaScript and Node.js. No prior TDD experience is needed, but basic familiarity with testing frameworks is recommended.

Pre-requisites for attendees:

• Laptop with Wifi
• Node.js installed
• git installed

Max attendees: 30

Length: 1 day

Location

The training will be held at the Cisco Toronto Innovation Centre, 88 Queen's Quay West, Suite 2900.  

Note that this is different from the main conference venue!

Detailed directions are here.

Time

The training begins at 9 AM sharp and goes until 5 PM.

There will be a one-hour lunch break, and morning and afternoon snack and coffee breaks. We will provide a light breakfast (e.g. bagels & cream cheese or something similar), plus lunch and snacks.