Miscellaneous
Nothing big has been going on today, although a few little things of interesting note.
Better Testing
Recently I’ve taken a strong interest in testing techniques and improvements, especially in the area of slow tests, as well as what can be done to improve our test coverage as well as make tests more automated and less dependant on external resources. Anyhow, there’s a couple interesting tools I came across this evening:
- JDBCUnit - a tool that records SQL statements and the data touched, allowing much easier mocking out of raw db access.
- antFIT - runs FIT tests from Ant.
Other food for thought has been the question, “Is it appropriate to mock data in customer acceptance tests?” According to the majority on the testdrivendevelopment yahoo mailing list, a resounding yes. As Michael Feathers points out,
while it’s great to run with nothing mocked out, often its not practical to run everything that way. I’ve visited clients who really wouldn’t be able to run large suites of ATs if, for instance, they didn’t mock out the database for many of them. You have to balance the risks and rewards.
This has been an interesting theme as of late, as we have many fitnesse tests that hit the database so hard that the suite runs SLOW. Ron Jefferies also addds some good advice,
I’ve generally felt that if most of the ATs work with
“recorded” replies rather than the real DB, and just a couple go to
the real DB and verify that today’s replies are like previously
recorded replies, that works pretty well.
Fitnesse Plugins
I also made a little headway in a new fitnesse plugin that can create an rss feed from fitnesse tests. This would be great for automated tests, by simply having developers subscribe to the acceptance test feed and getting updates on test results as they’ve run (automatically of course).
Team Politics
Lately been having some political issues amongst the team that have caused some disagreements. Nothing major really, but it illuminated an area that I have to sadly admit I am inexperienced with and in the dark about; team politics and how to effectively work with it. I know it’s not possible to solve some team disagreements, but it’s handy to know how to work with it and how to reach effective compromises, our prove your point (which can be difficult for me since I am both fairly new to the team AND the 2nd youngest developer on the team). Guess I have a bit of reading ahead.
Coffee Shop Madness
I usually stop in a different coffee shop each morning to grab a mocha before work, but Lakota is definately now off my list. The morning employee is always a bit rude, and yesterday morning was excessively so. As soon as I placed an order for a tripple mocha she snatched my card and started running it up, as I was trying to say I would like a scone with it too. She rolled her eyes, got one out and rang it up, and gave me an empty cup. Huh? I wanted a mocha… she then started to ring it up and asked me how many shots I wanted, and I simply replied, “a tripple mocha”. It didn’t catch. Share stared at me, dumbfounded. 
“Tripple means three of course” giggled her co-worker. Of course, she was unimpressed.
Unfortunately, a tripple mocha means three shots, but you didn’t specify the size. I got it in a cup so small I think it was all espresso with maybe a shot of mocha in it. Sadly, my debit card got charged twice for her mistake when I only signed one 3 dollar receipt, and I lost $10 over their shitty coffee that morning. Customer service surrenders.
Grouchiness
I’ve supspicously been a bit grouchy lately, and have made the mistake of coming off as being a bit snappy when providing constructive criticism to others. I’d imagine it should all be fine once I take the week off next week. No major vacation planned, but I’ll be visiting friends and they’ll be visiting me over the next week, so I’ve been considering going to the Ozarks to take my mind off things. Oh yeah, and I think it may be best to avoid computers all week that week. 
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