Continuous Testing: with Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript

eBook Details:

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: WOW! eBook; 1st edition (July 2, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934356700
• ISBN-13: 978-1934356708

eBook Description:

Continuous Testing: with Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript

Now you can immediately detect problems in code-before it’s too late, and before problems spread. It isn’t magic, but a clever combination of tests, tools, and techniques that tells you right away when there’s a problem. Not minutes, hours or days from now, but right now, when it’s easiest to fix. Spend more of your time writing valuable software, and less time slogging through code line-by-line and second-guessing your decisions.

We’ll show you how to set up and run automated tests that check your work continuously as you write code. You’ll start with tools such as Autotest and Watchr and see how to use them effectively in a continuous environment.

You’ll discover the fundamentals of creating and maintaining a test suite that’s fast, informative, reliable, and exhaustive. You’ll use powerful techniques such as inline assertions-a much better alternative to debugging or console printing. See how Continuous Testing can improve the quality of your existing tests and ensure that the new tests you write will do the job.

You’ll start with examples in Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript, but you’ll learn general techniques you can apply to a wide range of languages and frameworks.

By giving you instant feedback about the quality of your code and the quality of your tests, continuous testing creates a visceral feedback loop that you can actually feel as you work. Get this book and start doing Continuous Testing: with Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript today.

Continuous Testing (CT) is a developer practice that shortens the feedback loops established by test-driven development and continuous integration. Building on techniques used by Agile software development practitioners, Continuous Testing: with Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript shows you how to get instant feedback about both the quality of your code, and the quality of your tests.

We show how you can create a customized continuous testing environment, specifically suited to the projects you’re working on. You’ll see working examples for languages such as Ruby and JavaScript, but the techniques described in this book can easily be applied no matter what technology you happen to be working with. We also cover how to extend this environment when working with frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, and discuss how creating rapid feedback loops can dramatically increase the rate at which you can deliver working, valuable software.

Automated testing is an increasingly common practice in the software development industry. However, many companies struggle to gain all the benefits of automated testing, due to poorly written or incomplete tests. Continuous Testing: with Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript shows how these companies can get the most value out of their existing tests. It also helps you improve the quality of the new tests you write, by giving you instant feedback about problem areas, and creating a visceral feedback loop for test quality that you can actually feel as you work.

Just as continuous integration and test-driven development have changed the definition of software development in the last ten years, Continuous Testing is poised to become a standard practice for development teams in the next decade.

About the Author

Ben Rady has helped both large and small organizations adopt more effective technical practices and deliver better software. Currently a senior software engineer at DRW Trading in Chicago, he is a frequent speaker at conferences around the U.S. As an associate professor at Loyola University, Ben is helping to mentor the next generation of great software developers.

Rod Coffin is a frequent speaker at software conferences and has written many articles on a range of software development topics, including agility, enterprise software development, and semantics.

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