asunit-users

[Asunit-users] Problems getting started

[David H. <em...@da...>]

Hi,

I am trying to get started in ASUnit but am having some trouble.

I am running Flash 8 on Mac OS X Tiger. I installed the ASUnit MXP. I also
downloaded the Unit Testing with ASUnit PDF by Mark Daggett. When I tried to
create the first test suite as he describes, the JSFL recursively added
AllTest.as files to every directory on my hard drive, beginning at root,
before it bombed.

Next, I installed the ASUnit XUL app, as described in a recent entry on the
blog. I got that to run, and I tried to follow the PDF using the XUL instead
of the MXP. I created a new project set up as follows:

/example 
    /deploy
    /source
    /test

I put my FLA into 'source', and had ASUnit put a class called Example.as
into 'source' and had ASUnit put the test files into 'test'. I changed the
publish settings for the file to publish the swf to 'deploy.'

No matter what I do, I cannot seem to get past these error messages:

**Error** /Users/dham/Desktop/example/test/ExampleTest.as: Line 5: The class
or interface 'asunit.framework.TestCase' could not be loaded.
     class ExampleTest extends TestCase {

**Error** /Users/dham/Desktop/example/test/AllTests.as: Line 2: The class or
interface 'asunit.framework.TestSuite' could not be loaded.
     class AllTests extends asunit.framework.TestSuite {

Total ActionScript Errors: 2      Reported Errors: 2

Help! What am I doing wrong? Many thanks for any help you can offer,

OK
DAH
-- 
David Ham
http://anthropomorphy.org        ::     NEW MOBILE NUMBER => +1 630.297.1273
http://davidham.com            ::     em...@da...

Re: [Asunit-users] Problems getting started

[Luke B. <lb...@gm...>]

Hey David,

I'm really sorry that this has been so difficult!

Thanks for sticking with it, at this point, you just need to add the asunit
framework sources to your fla classpath. You can do this in authoring for
all fla's by pressing CMD+U, and adding the appropriate framework src path
to your ActionScript classpath... You can do it for a specific fla file by
going to the publish settings.

Please let me know if this doesn't work for you.


Thanks,


Luke
www.asunit.org




On 11/20/06, David Ham <em...@da...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am trying to get started in ASUnit but am having some trouble.
>
> I am running Flash 8 on Mac OS X Tiger. I installed the ASUnit MXP. I also
> downloaded the Unit Testing with ASUnit PDF by Mark Daggett. When I tried
> to
> create the first test suite as he describes, the JSFL recursively added
> AllTest.as files to every directory on my hard drive, beginning at root,
> before it bombed.
>
> Next, I installed the ASUnit XUL app, as described in a recent entry on
> the
> blog. I got that to run, and I tried to follow the PDF using the XUL
> instead
> of the MXP. I created a new project set up as follows:
>
> /example
>     /deploy
>     /source
>     /test
>
> I put my FLA into 'source', and had ASUnit put a class called Example.as
> into 'source' and had ASUnit put the test files into 'test'. I changed the
> publish settings for the file to publish the swf to 'deploy.'
>
> No matter what I do, I cannot seem to get past these error messages:
>
> **Error** /Users/dham/Desktop/example/test/ExampleTest.as: Line 5: The
> class
> or interface 'asunit.framework.TestCase' could not be loaded.
>      class ExampleTest extends TestCase {
>
> **Error** /Users/dham/Desktop/example/test/AllTests.as: Line 2: The class
> or
> interface 'asunit.framework.TestSuite' could not be loaded.
>      class AllTests extends asunit.framework.TestSuite {
>
> Total ActionScript Errors: 2      Reported Errors: 2
>
> Help! What am I doing wrong? Many thanks for any help you can offer,
>
> OK
> DAH
> --
> David Ham
> http://anthropomorphy.org        ::     NEW MOBILE NUMBER => +1
> 630.297.1273
> http://davidham.com            ::     em...@da...
>
>
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT
> Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share
> your
> opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash
> http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV
> _______________________________________________
> Asunit-users mailing list
> Asu...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/asunit-users
>

Re: [Asunit-users] Problems getting started

[David H. <em...@da...>]

Luke,

Thanks a lot for your response. I was able to get it to work, but I
discovered what may be a bug.

I tried the MXP on my Mac a couple of times, with no luck. In response to
your comment from another email:

=B3Please make sure to never run the "create ..." scripts from anywhere other
than a leaf project folder... Basically, these scripts will traverse your
file system from the target folder and add AllTest.as files to each
directory found forward of your FLA or project. The XUL UI is at least
slightly more considerate in that it only adds AllTest.as files if it finds
*Test.as <http://Test.as>  files forward of that location... =B2

I wasn't sure what this meant. I saved an example.fla in its own directory,
but the panel in the MXP doesn't seem to have a folder where it is run from=
;
it's just run from within the Flash IDE. It kept creating all those
AllTests.as files (on my Mac; on my PC it worked fine) so I had to stop
using it.

Even so, it occurred to me that I should probably have the ASUnit framework
be part of my app's codebase, so I put it inside my source directory so my
classpath won't have to hunt for it, and so other developers wouldn't have
to install the extension if they didn't want to. I was able to install the
XUL app per your instructions in your blog post. The XUL app created a clas=
s
and test files for me, in the correct folders.

But here is what I think might be a bug:

The XUL app creates AllTests.as files at each level of the app that begin
with:

class com.AllTests (or whatever, depending on where it is) extends
asunit.framework.TestSuite {  ...

but of course the framework is packaged under com.asunit.*and so the
compiler pukes. When I did a find and replace, it found the problem only in
AllTests.as files, and when I changed them to "extends com.asunit.framework=
"
it worked fine.

So, did I find a bug, or am I using the tool incorrectly?

And finally, have you considered putting up a Wiki for documentation, like
how they do at script.aculo.us? I get the sense that ASUnit can do a lot of
things that are not readily apparent. You could have some contributors writ=
e
tactical stuff like definitions of all the methods, and others write about
things like TDD best practices. I'd be happy to write some of these things
as soon as I learn them. :)

Thanks again,

OK
DAH


On 11/20/06 6:04 PM, "Luke Bayes" <lb...@gm...> wrote:

> Hey David,
>=20
> I'm really sorry that this has been so difficult!
>=20
> Thanks for sticking with it, at this point, you just need to add the asun=
it
> framework sources to your fla classpath. You can do this in authoring for=
 all
> fla's by pressing CMD+U, and adding the appropriate framework src path to=
 your
> ActionScript classpath... You can do it for a specific fla file by going =
to
> the publish settings.
>=20
> Please let me know if this doesn't work for you.
>=20
>=20
> Thanks,
>=20
>=20
> Luke
> www.asunit.org <http://www.asunit.org>
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
> On 11/20/06, David Ham <em...@da...> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>=20
>> I am trying to get started in ASUnit but am having some trouble.
>>=20
>> I am running Flash 8 on Mac OS X Tiger. I installed the ASUnit MXP. I al=
so
>> downloaded the Unit Testing with ASUnit PDF by Mark Daggett. When I trie=
d to
>> create the first test suite as he describes, the JSFL recursively added
>> AllTest.as files to every directory on my hard drive, beginning at root,
>> before it bombed.
>>=20
>> Next, I installed the ASUnit XUL app, as described in a recent entry on =
the
>> blog. I got that to run, and I tried to follow the PDF using the XUL ins=
tead
>> of the MXP. I created a new project set up as follows:
>>=20
>> /example
>>     /deploy
>>     /source
>>     /test
>>=20
>> I put my FLA into 'source', and had ASUnit put a class called Example.as
>> <http://Example.as>
>> into 'source' and had ASUnit put the test files into 'test'. I changed t=
he
>> publish settings for the file to publish the swf to 'deploy.'
>>=20
>> No matter what I do, I cannot seem to get past these error messages:
>>=20
>> **Error** /Users/dham/Desktop/example/test/ExampleTest.as: Line 5: The c=
lass
>> or interface 'asunit.framework.TestCase' could not be loaded.
>>      class ExampleTest extends TestCase {
>>=20
>> **Error** /Users/dham/Desktop/example/test/AllTests.as: Line 2: The clas=
s or
>> interface 'asunit.framework.TestSuite' could not be loaded.
>>      class AllTests extends asunit.framework.TestSuite {
>>=20
>> Total ActionScript Errors: 2      Reported Errors: 2
>>=20
>> Help! What am I doing wrong? Many thanks for any help you can offer,
>>=20
>> OK
>> DAH
>> --
>> David Ham
>> http://anthropomorphy.org        ::     NEW MOBILE NUMBER =3D> +1 630.297.=
1273
>> http://davidham.com            ::     em...@da...
>>=20
>>=20
>>=20
>>=20
>>=20
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-
>> Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT
>> Join SourceForge.net 's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share=
 your
>> opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash
>> http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=3Djoin.php&p=3Dsourceforge&CID=3DDEVDE=
V
>> <http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=3Djoin.php&amp;p=3Dsourceforge&amp;=
CID=3DD
>> EVDEV>=20
>> _______________________________________________
>> Asunit-users mailing list
>> Asu...@li...
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/asunit-users
>>=20
>=20
>=20
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT
> Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share y=
our
> opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash
> http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=3Djoin.php&p=3Dsourceforge&CID=3DDEVDEV
>=20
> _______________________________________________
> Asunit-users mailing list
> Asu...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/asunit-users

Re: [Asunit-users] Problems getting started

[Luke B. <lb...@gm...>]

Hey David,

Thanks so much for taking the time with your feedback. You're absolutely
correct that AsUnit ships with a pretty wide variety of features that are
intended to make TDD a bit easier, but sometimes wind up making things more
complex than they need to be. Ali and I have been struggling with these
issues for quite some time and would really like to find a way to make
things simpler.

To be honest, we haven't actually used the MXP build in a very long time
since neither of us enjoy coding or compiling with Flash Authoring, and even
worse neither of us works on a Mac. Even in our most recent project where we
were compelled to use Authoring for some assets, we still finished
compilation with MTASC and used FDT for real development. Both of us mainly
just use the XUL UI at this point and I find it to be much more flexible and
useful. It sounds like you have uncovered a pretty serious and debilitating
mac bug in the MXP tools. I have some quick guesses about where the bug is,
if someone is still getting value out of this tool and is interested in
addressing this issue, please contact me off list so we can talk about
getting a fix in before the next release.

One thing that we've been considering is decoupling AsUnit from all of these
extras and basically just shipping the framework code completely separately
as SWC files with simple "Getting Started Tutorials", then deploying these
extra tools with more specific instructional content... The MXP and XUL UI
are really just add-ons that are intended to take some of the drudgery out
of TestCase and TestSuite creation and maintenance.

As far as your question about the imports goes, I'm not exactly sure what is
causing the problem that you're seeing. It sounds like you're having
problems because there are files in the as2 branch that end in "Test.as",
and suites are being injected into those folders. If that's the issue, you
should be able to remove any files that end in "Test.as" from you local
classpath build and this might fix the problem. Those files aren't necessary
and we're actually planning on moving them out of the distribution in the
near future.

Another possibly informative article about as2 vs as25 can be found here:

AsUnit Framework 2 vs
2.5<http://www.asserttrue.com/articles/2006/10/23/asunit-framework-as2-vs-as25>

You might also be having problems with previously-created TestCases from the
MXP for the as2 framework, and now you might be using 25 templates from the
XUL UI.

With XUL UI, You can build to as2, as25 or as3 classes, but from the MXP,
you can only really build to as2 (unless you dig around and directly modify
the really ugly templates yourself). If you're using the XUL UI, and would
like the as2 support, choose the first item in the Templates pulldown ("AS
2, Flash Players 6, 7 or 8"), the second template choice is actually for the
as25 branch which only supports Flash Players 7 and 8 and uses a slightly
different import scheme.

To your point about building a wiki...

Ali and I have generally had a difficult time really getting at good
information in wikis. It's been my impression that the really successful
wikis require a pretty heavy amount of management and organization effort.
Neither of us really have the time to invest in such a thing, but if anyone
out there would be interested in setting up and/or hosting such a thing, it
would definitely receive our full support with editing, links, mentions,
emails, etc... I could definitely consider pointing a subdomain of asunit in
that direction, we would be glad to offer some help for the initial
organization of it too.

http://wiki.asunit.org...

Anyone interested?

Please feel free to contact me off list if you find yourself with some time
to contribute to the project.


Thanks,


Luke Bayes
www.asunit.org

Re: [Asunit-users] Problems getting started

[David H. <em...@da...>]

Luke,

OK. I got rid of the MXP and re-installed the XULUI and it seems to have
solved my classpath issues.

However:

How do I control the UI in the AsUnitTestRunner? It is showing the output o=
f
my tests just fine; unfortunately it takes the whole screen so I can=B9t see
the app itself!

Thanks again for your help; I=B9ll get this thing working someday.

OK
DAH

Re: [Asunit-users] Problems getting started

[Luke B. <lb...@gm...>]

> How do I control the UI in the AsUnitTestRunner? It is showing the output
> of
> my tests just fine; unfortunately it takes the whole screen so I can=B9t =
see
> the app itself!



Hey David,

Yet another really good question. Please keep them coming!

Basically, you don't want to run your entire application while running your
Unit Test harness. The way we have usually managed this, is to create a mai=
n
application file and use a separate main test runner. Then we switch betwee=
n
the two when we're building to deployment vs development targets. The major
drawback to this approach when you're working with a FLA file, is that it
means you can't build a streaming / frame-based file. All of your
functionality needs to be placed inside of Symbols, and attached at
initialization. When you run the test harness, you shouldn't actually see
anything, the test suite should just run from beginning to end without
displaying any part of your application.

Once you have the application structured in this way, simply create a new
Test Case, and within the setUp() override, call attachMovie. We have
implemented this method on TestCase (which is *not* a MovieClip) so that yo=
u
won't have to manage unique instance names or depths. You *can* if you want
to, but we recommend that you don't because the Flash Players 6, 7 and 8
don't really handle synchronous creation and destruction of MovieClips very
well... The revised method signature looks like this:

attachMovie(linkageId:String, initObj:Object =3D null):MovieClip

If you use this method, AsUnit will attach a MovieClip instance over the UI=
.
You should also take the return value and put it into a member variable so
that you can later call removeMovieClip(instance:MovieClip) in the override
of tearDown().

Once you have this process sorted out, you will be able to easily test smal=
l
components of your application. When the TestCase is typically executed, fo=
r
each method found that matches "test*", it will call, setUp(), [the method]=
,
then tearDown(). After doing this for each method, it will call "cleanUp",
just in case you have some more work to do...

Now - to your question, how do I *look* at my stuff while I'm working on
tests?

In your main test runner, where you call start(AllTests), you can instead
call start(MyTestCase:Class, methodName:String).

This will tell AsUnit to load the referenced TestCase, call setUp(), and
then only call the testMethod whose name was identified. Teardown will not
be called. This allows to you build up your test cases for visual elements
one method at a time, all the while visually verifying that your entities d=
o
what you expect. As you build up a TestCase, don't forget to run the whole
suite before you check code into version control. That can be done by simpl=
y
changing the start method back to start(AllTests).

Please let me know if this helps, and if you have any more questions. We're
most interested in helping people that have never written tests before, and
trying to make their first experiences as painless as possible.


Thanks,


Luke Bayes
www.asunit.org

Re: [Asunit-users] Problems getting started

[David H. <em...@da...>]

Luke,

Thanks a lot for your response. After I had a good night=B9s sleep, I realize=
d
the wisdom of having a separate TestRunner FLA. I now have all my ASUnit
stuff, including the FLA and the whole 2.5 tree, under a directory separate
from my application tree. Now I don't even have to have ASUnit in my
classpath, I instead point the TestRunner FLA to the application's
classpath, and when we deploy, I can remove the 'test' tree and harness and
the app will not even notice.

This has been very useful to me, and I'd be interested in writing it up. Yo=
u
mentioned you'd be willing to draw up an outline of things you'd like to se=
e
on an ASUnit wiki; if you want to send me a subject outline off-list I'd be
glad to start writing some of it up. It will help me validate that I am in
fact learning the right things, and the result will be nice docs for other
newcomers.=20

I have done a fair bit of OOP in ActionScript but I have no formal
programming training, and thus know nothing about unit testing, mock
objects, and so on.

Plus I am Mac-o-centric, which might be useful if you and the dev team
mostly use PCs.

Thanks again,=20

OK
DAH

Re: [Asunit-users] Problems getting started

[Luke B. <lb...@gm...>]

Hey David,

Thanks for the feedback. We would definitely appreciate any help we can get
with Docs and Macs. I bought a mac mini earlier this year, but am definitely
not quite up to speed with using it.

We desperately need a mac installer for the XUL UI. If you can figure out
how to build a mac package that includes xulrunner and our application so
that mac users can just double-click to install, it would be immensely
appreciated.

As far as documentation goes, Ali and I just decided to go ahead and stub
out a WikiBook for AsUnit. I think that this will give us a good
collaborative environment for writing useful documentation. Please check out
the link:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Using_AsUnit

I have thrown together a rough structure that might work, but any feedback
or contributions would be greatly appreciated. Please feel free to just edit
the page if you have something to add.


Thanks,


Luke Bayes
www.asunit.org

[Asunit-users] ASUnit 101: Where do I start?

[David H. <em...@da...>]

Luke,

If you don=B9t mind all my n00b questions, I=B9ll keep asking them! I will
prefix them with =8CASUnit 101=B9 and then I and others can find them later.

I have ASUnit installed and working, and my app structure is like this:

/assets --> for images and other compile time assets
/deploy --> for SWFs, HTML, XML, and other runtime items
/source --> FLA and classes
/test --> ASUnit framework and test harness code

The app I am building is a room layout tool; users can lay out walls, and
arrange room objects like furniture and cabinets. The output is an XML-base=
d
description of the room and a series of area measurements. I have a rough
MVC structure planned, as well as an object model.

But where do I start with my test-code-simplify cycle? It seems that every
object requires something that would come from another object, and if I wan=
t
my tests to mirror real-world conditions (which they should do, yes?) I nee=
d
to create those objects first and then use them in my later tests.

Should I start at the top, with my main application class, and work inwards=
,
or should I start with my smallest classes (like Polygon, which will be use=
d
by the Room object), and build out, adding new classes as I need them?

I ask because it already seems like a lot of extra work. I don't know how t=
o
think of it in test-first terms yet. Normally I would just sketch out my MV=
C
structure, and then jump into building it, using trace() to check my work a=
s
I go. But now I am trying to think of tests for each little method and
property, tests that will become part of the permanent test harness, and
it's such a different way to think that I am sort of stymied by it.

I understand that TDD is supposed to provide a more understandable and
maintainable app, a leaner codebase, and an automated test suite, at the
expense of a little extra time and extra code produced, in the form of all
the test cases. I am just confused as to how to start

As always, any help you or others can provide is greatly appreciated. I wil=
l
adapt what I learn and put it in the wikiBook.

OK
DAH

BTW, I am trying to follow the Test First Guidelines as described here:
http://xprogramming.com/xpmag/testFirstGuidelines.htm

Re: [Asunit-users] ASUnit 101: Where do I start?

[Luke B. <lb...@gm...>]

David,

Please keep asking questions. You are definitely not alone with these!

The question of where to start is actually the most important and of course
the most difficult to answer.

I have been sitting here for an hour writing paragraphs of prose and
deleting them over and over again trying to find something meaningful and
yet concise to say. Following is the best I can come up with and
unfortunately still isn't very concise.

Ali and I practice Extreme Programming <http://extremeprogramming.org/>.
This is a kind-of-scary, sort-of-strange, poorly-named, pretty-fad-sounding
development process that embarrasses me every time I hear it's name stated
out loud. I suspect the over-forty crowd responsible for the naming watched
too much TV and didn't realize that this term is considered ridiculous by
the rest of us. We usually prefer to lay claim to "Agile" development, but
the truth is, we work pretty hard at just about all of the details outlined
in XP.

Apologies aside, our experience demonstrated in no uncertain terms that Big
Design Up Front <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BigDesignUpFront> (or the waterfall
process) simply did not work for the kinds of projects that we worked on.
Ali and I spent a considerable amount of time looking into alternatives and
the one we settled on was XP. I'm not in much of a position to comment on
other approaches, and I'm not naive enough to think that there is only one
way to do something. I recognize that XP is not a "Silver
Bullet<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SilverBullet>",
and not appropriate for every project. For me - it has proven to be the best
way - that I have found - to get through a project from beginning to end and
wind up with something that is launch-worthy and a client that is relatively
excited about the value they received.

We were able to slowly move into XP one step at a time. We started with Unit
Testing <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?UnitTest> and
NoteCards<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ManagingCards>,
moved into Iterative
Releases<http://extremeprogramming.org/rules/releaseoften.html>,
slid toward actual Test-Driven
Development<http://extremeprogramming.org/rules/testfirst.html>,
then began seeing value in Pair
Programming<http://extremeprogramming.org/rules/pair.html>.
Eventually, we had the privilege of working on a project with a firm that
already had XP development implemented, and this experience helped ground us
in the whole picture. I'm not sure how other people do it, but a kinder,
gentler approach worked well for us and helped us avoid becoming overwhelmed
and reactionary. I tend to suffer from a somewhat enlarged ego and probably
wouldn't have done well if someone had forced me to suddenly run a project
under the full range of XP practices<http://extremeprogramming.org/rules.html>
.

I wanted to go into all of this, because it colors my response to "where to
start"...

I happen to be a voracious reader and can't help but recommend a couple of
books that truly helped me answer this question for myself:

The book "Test Driven Development by
Example<http://www.amazon.com/Test-Driven-Development-Addison-Wesley-Signature/dp/0321146530/sr=8-1/qid=1164773372/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-2146572-6188719?ie=UTF8&s=books>"
written by Kent Beck <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?KentBeck> (the founder of XP)
is an excellent read and leaves a lot of the ancillary details of XP out,
but gives a strong introduction to how this one part works. I have read this
book over and over again and yet I know there is more information in there
waiting to be gleaned.

The other major book that impacted my development deeply was "Design
Patterns<http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Object-Oriented-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633612/ref=cm_lm_fullview_prod_1/104-2146572-6188719>"
by the Gang of Four. This book is so dense and academic that I couldn't
understand much more than the introduction the first 5 or 6 times I sat down
to read it. Ali and I finally broke down and created a Design Patterns Study
Group <http://www.industriallogic.com/papers/learning.html> in order to more
fully understand what these guys were trying to teach us. I don't think I
have ever learned so much so quickly, and can't recommend doing this
strongly enough.

To your specific question of whether you should dig deep and start writing
and testing features like a Polygon, or try to stay general and start with
higher-level features like "Create Room", I have to say that my answer is
sadly - both.

What we try to do when we start a project is to stand over a big table and
write down every feature that comes to mind - one feature to each note card.
Some of these note cards look like "user stories", some of them are simply
technical details or class names and some of them are essentially
components. The best term that I can come up with to describe them are
"modules". They're basically units of functionality.

When we're with the customer, we talk about "User Stories" or "Features"
like "Login" or "Display a list of thingys", or "edit a single thingy". But
when we're note carding, we usually talk about components and entities. We
don't try to note card every single class that we're going to build, but
usually wind up seeing classes emerge from this process. When we're done, we
have a pretty good idea of how the next iteration (week or two) is going to
look. If we want "Login" to work, we'll need a user name and password
TextInput control. We'll need some kind of submit button, failure feedback,
a panel of some sort, and hopefully some mechanism where we can store the
fact that someone has in fact logged in.

After note carding a user story like this, we usually sit down and start
writing components. What should a TextInput control look like to support
login? NOT how many features could I possibly ever need from a TextInput
control... This is a critical and major problem that Ali and I both have
difficulty balancing in every single project. It is so enticing to build the
world's best TextInput control - one that does everything you could ever
think of. But - for this iteration - we need Login, not a scalable, HTML
WYSIWYG text editor. It's like building a gesture of your application. You
start from the outside with general features, and you instantly drill deep
down into the details - but the crux is to not spend too much time worrying
over those details. TDD drives you back to the feature as soon as the detail
work is "good enough".

The really tough problem is trying to figure out how general a feature to
start with, so that you don't need 500 details in order to even begin.
That's where note cards come in really handy. They help you think about
things in a more modular way and take on a group of tasks that can be
accomplished in an afternoon or two. If you find yourself immersed in a task
that you thought would take an afternoon, and now it's 3 days later, at
least you know where you are for this iteration. If you find that happening
every time you sit down, you can start to finally address your enduring
optimism (I'm still working on that by the way). The idea is that you're
building and delivering useful functionality every day.

The real benefit to this type of process comes when the business people
crawl up to your desk in a panic because they need something different from
what they used to think they needed, and you're able to say - "That's not a
problem, I've only built the things that you've already seen, and I'm happy
to talk about this new feature that you're interested in, let's try to
figure out what you need right now."

Well, I think I've run off at the mouth long enough and hopefully some of
the links here will help to better explain what I'm rambling on and on
about...


Good Luck,


Luke
www.asunit.org

Re: [Asunit-users] ASUnit 101: Where do I start?

[David H. <em...@da...>]

Luke, 

This is awesome.

My experience in using design patterns has been exclusively in implementing
variations on the patterns Colin Moock describes in his books, but he draws
on the Gang of Four book, so I should probably go there next. And the Kent
Beck books are in my shopping cart as we speak.

I have read about story cards before and will write some up tomorrow
morning. I did my first few cycles of test-code-simplify today and while
they were somewhat clumsy, I am starting to see how it should work.

I do have some other questions, but I will put them in new threads because
the topics are different. As I wade into this methodology, I start to see
hints of the answers to my questions, and the more I spell the questions out
the easier it is to see the answers. I do, however, have a long way to go.

Thanks as always for your generosity and insight.

OK
DAH

Re: [Asunit-users] ASUnit 101: Where do I start?

[Luke B. <lb...@gm...>]

Thanks David.

I really appreciate the kind words and I'm glad to be of some help.


Thanks,

Luke
www.asunit.org