Test Driven Development with NUnit and C# (with 50 people!)

Published Wednesday, December 10, 2003 6:13 AM

Last night I presented on the above topic at the Pittsburgh .NET User Group.  I had been having trouble in my preparation trying to figure out the best way to not only explain the concepts but to win over the audience to the TDD process.  Looking at the two wonderful books (Beck,  Astels) available on TDD made me realise something - they both explain by example!  The more I thought about it, I realised that this was the XP/TDD way - “pair with the new guy“.

But how do you pair with 50 people?  We did!  In about 40 mins (during a 2 hour session), we created the projects from scratch in VS.NET and worked on a fictitious TODO list adding features TDD-style.  People got involved - yelled out questions, helped find compile areas, questioned the small steps :-), questioned  the “fake it“ implementations and so on.

Did it work?  I had several people come up to me afterwards saying they had dabbled with TDD before but had never really got it but the practical exercise had shown them the light.  Quite a few people even mentioned that they would like to continue working on the TODO list again to see how it evolves.

My slides and code samples will be available online soon!

What are your experiences in converting people to TDD?

by thycotic
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Comments

# Dennis v/d Stelt said on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 6:43 AM

I'd REALLY, REALLY like to see your slides and examples! We're building a framework for a large application right now and are discussing if we should use NUnit. I'd like to, if it was only for learning how to use it! :)

Maybe you've got some links or something to good articles?

# Sam Gentile said on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 8:42 AM

Nice slant! Good idea

# Page Brooks said on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 10:49 AM

I am interested in seeing your slides as well. Not too many people have been talking about actual practices with NUnit, but everyone talks about the benefits it provides.

# Jonathan Cogley said on Sunday, December 14, 2003 10:07 PM

Slides and code demos are now available!
http://www.thycotic.com/presentations.html

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