Recently I discovered an interesting blog thanks to Tim Ottinger’s comment on my TDD Anti-Patterns post, Agile in a Flash. It looks like they’re putting together a comprehensive book plus flash cards about Agile, and from the few posts I’ve read it looks very interesting. Check it out! 
Evaluating this framework brings back memories… the year was 2005, I had been working for a small IT firm as one of the first developers hired, which as of 2005 included three developers. I had zero process in place and had never had any experience elsewhere as this was my first job. Somehow, from reading Royce’s Software Project Management to a book on RUP to a book on Scrum, I finally found my way to Extreme Programming and was trying my best to implement it. I had just picked up unit testing and was using SimpleTest (after trying PHPUnit out and deciding I liked SimpleTest better) and felt that I should be Test Driving all code, javascript included. So I joined #javascript on efnet and asked “Hey, what should I use? I’ve been trying jsUnit out…”
The reply I got was that I should stop using jsUnit from jsunit.net and start using the one on berlios.de instead as it was a more faithful port of JUnit, was more Object Oriented, and it was possible to run the tests from Rhino (which led me to asking what rhino is, and then a 2 hour longer conversation ensued).
Anyway, jsunit is just that… it’s a faithful port of JUnit 3.8.1 and is designed in a more object oriented way than it’s counterpart. In fact, the syntax looks similar to the current built in test runner in js-test-driver. With that out of the way, let’s take a quick look at the dirty details.
A few of my developer friends from St.Louis are organizing a local conference, The Strange Loop, being held at the Tivoli Theatre on October 23rd. What is Strange Loop you ask? I don’t really know either, so from the site:
Strange Loop is a unique St. Louis developer conference open to all developers, languages, and methodologies. Do you talk primarily to developers in your own company? Do you broaden your horizon by attending local user groups? Strange Loop is about connecting islands of developers and expanding their minds.
They DO have a very interesting speaker for the keynote, Alex Payne, the API lead at twitter. The call for presentations is now open for submissions, but you can guarentee that with developers hailing from all over the midwest, there’s bound to be some very strong presentations. Got something you’d like to present? The make a submission!
Hope to see you there!
I really don’t know why I always have to repeat this time and time again, over and over. It feels like every time I turn around there’s always someone who thinks/acts like velocity is a productivity metric. Enough Already! It’s not!
All that it really is is a number that identifies the capacity a team can take on in the next iteration based on the previous iterations. Basically, it’s an indicator of what a team has the capacity to do, not it’s productivity. To quote Paul Hodgetts:
“Velocity is more of a quantity of work completed metric. Useful and important, but not the sole measure of success. I think you would want a set of metrics that together help us understand our current capabilities to deliver as well as if those capabilities are changing from one point in time to another. I don’t believe there is one magic “agility number” to measure [productivity].”
Just wish there was someway to stop people from thinking the sky is falling and productivity is going down because of a decrease in velocity. 
Just came across Infinitest during my nightly blog reading… haven’t gotten a chance to look at it, but at first glance it looks like what I’ve come to love in the autospec feature of ZenTest (and the feature that made me the most interested in jspec).
The idea of junit tests auto-running on change versus having to hit ctrl+F11 each time makes me happy. Or just lazy.
Tonight I’ve decided to bounce back and try out another testing framework that’s been on my list for awhile, YUI Test. From the site:
YUI Test is a testing framework for browser-based JavaScript solutions. Using YUI Test, you can easily add unit testing to your JavaScript solutions. While not a direct port from any specific xUnit framework, YUI Test does derive some characteristics from nUnit and JUnit.
Fair enough… lets look at the dirty details and then get started.
I got an email today from a Brandon Laughridge of MortgageLoanPlace about a programming contest their currently running, “Super Sexy” Mortgage Calculator Contest.
I’ll let Brandon fill in the rest of the details:
It’s a legit competition with $10k going to the winner, $500 new egg gift cards going to the 2nd and 3rd place folks, and we’re offering up $1k to the person/site that refers that winner.
Disclaimer: I’m not associated with MortgageLoanPlace, but one of of their employees know me through a friend and on twitter.
Just got back from the gym and it’s time for yet another evening of experimenting with test driven development in javascript. I’ve been hearing a lot about JsTestDriver lately, so tonight I’m going to see what all the fuss is about.
So yesterday I came home from work… to this.
In the end, I’m going to need to replace the carpet (since it’s all attatched, we’re looking at replacing the living room, foyer, and hallway) and two bedroom doors from where they scratched on the doors.
Don’t know what happened… guess they got spooked out by the storm.
Subscribe in a reader