Paul Moser

Wisdom tells us what we should do, experience tells us what we should never do again

The theory goes that you should write tests to check the functionality of your code, then when you refactor your code or add new features you’ve got a safety net to check that what you’ve done hasn’t broken existing functionality.

The theory is good, but in practice it doesn’t work.*

If you write tests to test your code you won’t write your tests, at least you won’t write all of them and you’ll cut corners. Writing tests to test a piece of code you already have is tedious. You’ll end up compromising your tests. You won’t test the simple stuff, because, well it’s simple, what could go wrong? It may be simple, but that’s just the sort of thing you’ll change without a moments thought but somewhere that’ll have a consequence you didn’t think of. You might skip testing the obvious stuff, but what’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to the next person to look at the code. You won’t test the difficult stuff, because that’s too time consuming and you’ve tested most of the other stuff so you figure you’re fairly safe. You won’t test the stuff that’s ‘impossible’ to test. That safety net that makes you feel secure, the holes are too big - just when you really need it you’ll fall straight through it.

So don’t write tests to test your code, write the tests before you write the code. Write tests to drive the design of your code (TDD/BDD), write tests so you know when you’re done. Only write code to fix a failing test. Yes you’ll still find your tests becoming complicated and stuff that’s difficult or ‘impossible’ to test. Listen to your tests - they are telling you something about your design. And the great thing is at the end of it, a side effect almost, you end with that safety net that really does allow you to refactor or add functionality to your code.

I think TDD/BDD and automated acceptance testing has the potential to significantly change not only how we initially produce a piece of software but also more importantly how it is enhanced and maintained throughout its ‘working life’ and it’s that which is radically going to change the value the software can deliver to the business and so the test become crucial to the success of your business. More on that later.

* when blogging you’re suppose to go for big bold controversial statements aren’t you?

Taking baby steps is often advocated for peoples adoption of Agile.

If you’re coming from a waterfall background there is a lot to take on when becoming Agile. To truly become Agile you cannot just blindly follow certain practices, you need to understand them so you can apply them appropriately, if you try to adopt all at once you’ll overload yourself, you won’t understand what’s having what effect, so yes, start by taking some baby steps but….

A few things I’d like to point out about babies:

1. they grow up
2. within a couple of years they’ll be walking, indeed running
3. when learning to walk they are bold, almost reckless
4. yes, sometimes they fall over, sometime they even hurt themselves, but they learn from it, stand up and try again

I also worry that by just constantly taking small steps you loose your point of reference, that every small step moves you such a short distance you cannot tell whether it’s moving you to success or to failure. Don’t be a frog in a slowly warmed pan of water, be the frog who is thrown in, you’ll be able to tell if it’s boiling and jump straight back out.

The last year has seen me working with Ruby rather than Java and I have really come to like the the way tests (or rather specs) are structured in RSpec and the general way BDD approaches tests (specs).

RSpec splits the behaviour of a class up into what happens in different contexts. An example probably explains things better, taking a trivial case of a stack (I'll get to Java in a minute but even if you don't know Ruby I think this code should be understandable):

So a stack should behave in a particular way:

A populated Stack
- should add to the top when sent #push
- should return the top item when sent #peek
- should NOT remove the top item when sent #peek
- should return the top item when sent #pop
- should remove the top item when sent #pop

An empty stack
- should be empty
- should no longer be empty after #push
- should complain when sent #peek
- should complain when sent #pop

An almost empty stack (with one item)
- should not be empty
- should remain not empty after #peek
- should become empty after #pop

(incidentally the above is output generated from the spec tool, a bit like generating JavaDocs from Java code)

I think splitting the behaviour up into these different contexts greatly improves the readability and maintainability of both the tests themselves and the code under test. But how to do it in Java?

It's possible to use RSpec to test Java code because you can run RSpec using JRuby, however I'm not sure if it is wise to drive the development of code in one language with tests in a different language, Ruby and Java approach numerous things very differently.

Now it would be possible to have numerous JUnit test classes for a given class, each one for a different context but this has it's drawbacks, when you make a change to your class you'd need to run numerous test cases, which you could get around by having a master testcase with a suite method that includes all the others, but then you have to maintain the list of testcases in the suite() method and it's all too easy for the list to get out of sync with the actual test cases. JUnit 4 provides a solution, you can use the Enclosed runner. The code below is an equivalent example to the RSpec one in Java.

As an aside I've also used the new assertThat() method and Hamcrest matchers as you get significantly better error messages when your tests fail that way.

To get a plain test output you could probably write a XSLT stylesheet that parses the test report, the stylesheet Kerry produced for use with Junit 3.x tests maybe a good starting point, or write a custom formatter and specify that in your JUnit Ant task.

There are also the JBehave and JDave BDD frameworks for Java which would be worth looking at if you like the look of BDD.

As in many UK offices we don't exactly have cubicles in my office, more like bays lined with, in our case, three desks on each side facing outwards, and between each bay is a partition which, unless you are particularly tall, you can't see over when sat down.

Typically a bay is assigned to a team so they can all sit together. However, what does it say about the importance of team work and communication that the way the office is set up you actually sit with your back to your colleagues? That's just wrong.

So maybe Agile works for small projects but it couldn't possible work for large projects? You couldn't work in iterations for a multi-million, let alone billion, pound project with thousands, let alone tens of thousands, of people, you'd need to carefully gather all the requirements, draw up a detailed design, put together the project plan and carefully stick to the plan?

Well the biggest engineering project I can think of is the American space program of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo which ultimately put a man on the moon.

It is difficult now to appreciate how little was known about space. Assuming that the Soviets had not lied about Yuri Gagarin NASA knew it was possible for a human to briefly survive in space, but that is all they knew, they did not know even the basics, could a man drink in space, could a man eat, could he sleep let along the longer term physiological effects of being weightless for days. Then there was the mechanics of space flight, docking two space craft, men operating outside of a vehicle in space, the list is almost endless.

So what NASA do? Well they didn't come up with a grand design, built it and deployed it (sent it to the moon). Project Gemini was a series of 10 manned missions, each one building on the knowledge gained from the previous. Apollo then built on Gemini.

• Gemini 3 - Cautious test flight, just 3 revolutions
• Gemini 4 - First American space walk
• Gemini 5 - Long duration 8 day flight,evaluated guidance and navigation system for future rendezvous missions
• Gemini 6 - First space rendezvous
• Gemini 7 - Long duration 14 day flight
• Gemini 8 - First docking in space
• Gemini 9 - 3 different rendezvous
• Gemini 10 - First use of Agena's power
• Gemini 11 - Altitude record using Agena propulsion system
• Gemini 12 - Aldrin set an EVA record of 5 hours, 30 minutes
• Apollo 7 - First test flight
• Apollo 8 - 2nd manned flight, all the way to the moon
• Apollo 9 - First flight of CSM/LM combination (Earth orbit)
• Apollo 10 - Dress rehersal, LM taken within 50,000 feet of lunar surface
• Apollo 11 - Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the moon

Typically Agile projects are time boxed with scope being variable, with the space program both time ("before the decade is out") and scope ("of landing a man on the moon") were fixed, as was quality ("and returning him safely to earth"), it was cost that was variable.

Ok, so the projects you've worked on haven't been as intimidating or as significant to mankind as sending someone to the moon but if you're honest with yourself there were probably a great many unknowns when you started and your future projects are likely to be the same.

So what prompted this post, after all Apollo ended over 3 years before I was born? I read Andrew Smiths "Moondust - In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth" and "Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys" by Michael Collins (he's the third astronaut on Apollo 11) , both highly recommended.

It's bugged me for a while about how best to go about unit testing classes that implement multiple interfaces where those interfaces are implemented by multiple classes or where a class extends another class and implements one or more interfaces.

What I want to avoid is in each test class implementing the the same set of tests for the behavior specified by the interface. That's not very DRY.

If your classes only implement a single interface then you can have a base class with the tests for the interface and then separate test classes derived from that for each class implementing the interface. The problem arises when your classes implement multiple interfaces - Java doesn't support multiple inheritance for classes so you can't have a base test case for each interface.

One answer with JUnit 4 is to use the parameterized test runner - I haven't thought about JUnit 3, if you're not using JUnit 4 because you're still using a JVM that doesn't support annotations JSE 6 is out now, catch up!

You need to have a test case for your interface and configure this to run with the parameterized runner. You also have a static factory method that provides the various implementations of the interface to be used in each test.

As an example, say the container I'm writing (I'm not really - I know there is Apache Geronimo, JBoss, Hivemind etc - this is just an example) supports services that it can start and stop, so I have an interface Service and the various services that I have, e.g. caching, lookup, logging etc, implement this interface.

I have a test case for Service that tests that the various implementations of Service adhere to the general contract. I might have the following three tests:

If I have a caching and lookup service and I want to test that both adhere to the contract of the Service interface then I have to annotate the ServiceTest to indicate that it should run with the parameterized runner and provide an annotated factory method that returns a collection of arguments to run the tests with.

So the full testcase is:

The test classes for CachingService and LookupService now only need deal with testing the specifics of caching or lookups rather than testing adherence to the service specification.

I have yet to use this in production code on a large scale so we'll have to see how it works out, but it seems far better than having to replicate test code amongst several test cases.

If I was to ask you to quote the Agile Manifesto what would you say?

• People and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

That is, whilst there is value in those items on the right, we value the items on the left more."

That's what I'd say and what I've heard others say, however it isn't actually all of the Agile Manifesto, there are a couple more lines at the start.

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

It's a shame these get missed because there is a lot in them. "We are uncovering", note the tense here, it is present not past, it is still ongoing, we are still learning. "Better ways" - by saying better rather than best it's acknowledged that this isn't the definitive answer or that any previous methods didn't work at all. "By doing it and helping other do it" - this is not some untested theory, this has been reached through real world experience.

At last no more messing about copying junit.jar or modifying your system classpath to get JUnit to work with Ant. Version 1.7 allows you to specify its location in a classpath element in your build file.

See the last point from the manual page for the JUnit task:

Note: You must have junit.jar available. You can do one of:
1. Put both junit.jar and ant-junit.jar in ANT_HOME/lib.
2. Do not put either in ANT_HOME/lib, and instead include their locations in your CLASSPATH environment variable.
3. Add both JARs to your classpath using -lib.
4. Specify the locations of both JARs using a element in a in the build file.
5. Leave ant-junit.jar in its default location in ANT_HOME/lib but include junit.jar in the passed to . (since Ant 1.7)

One thing to be careful of, make sure you include the junit.jar file that you want, you probably want to make the classpath element specifying the location of the junit.jar file the first classpath element in your junit task - I spent quite a bit of time trying to work out why the tests annotated with the new JUnit 4 @Test annotation weren't getting run only to eventually find a JUnit 3.1 junit.jar file from the Spring Framework in the classpath before the JUnit 4 junit.jar file.

Many still seem to doubt the capabilities of small agile teams. Small agile teams go against conventional wisdom - they might be able to handle simple problems but for real problems you need big teams, you couldn't build a team of only high ability people, they wouldn't be capable (due to character clashes etc) of self organizing and working together - so the arguments go.

The British SAS are arguably the most highly regarded special forces unit in the world. A team in the SAS:

• consists of a small number of highly motivated individuals
• is made up of generalizing specialists - each team member has an area of expertise but is more than competent in other fields
• is self organizing, able to respond as the situation changes
• given a problem the team will amongst themselves work out how to tackle it, they are responsible for their own plan

If you don't think such a team can work you can go and pick an argument with the SAS.

The above description is also an accurate description of an agile software development team*.

When the SAS was formed it went against conventional wisdom and many doubted its worth. Time has taught us otherwise.

* As I sit here comfortably in front of my PC I am well aware that the problems and risks I face day to day are nothing like those faced by those in the armed services. I don't mean to cause offence to anyone in the armed services, I just think it's an unusual but powerful example of "individuals and interactions over processes and tools"

At last, a simple to understand description of OSGi. Now I start to understand what the fuss is about.