Last updated Dec 2, 2024 Published Mar 12, 2017

A Guided Path to Test-Driven Development - TDD

I do not recall who introduced me to Test-Driven Development (TDD), but I have always been interested in the testing aspect of software development. I vividly remember reading the iconic book Test-Driven Development By Example by Kent Beck on my commute. Every page was a discovery, and I felt a sense of frustration, as the baby steps conflicted with my confidence that my code would work.

However, given the context of my early career, I did not have the opportunity to explore TDD further. The places I worked at unfortunately cared more about delivering tasks quickly than sacrificing time for testing. I share more about my TDD history in a blog post, but I was astonished by the lack of care for testing among practitioners. My intention here is to share my previous experience with writing tests and resources that I think are helpful. This is not a definitive guide to testing, but rather a structured way to get started.

Table of contents

Testing timeline

1. Introduction
  • What is testing? - Discover what a test is from the perspective of a practitioner and the different shapes that are out there to distribute the different types of tests from the point of view of TDD
  • Should you test? - In this section there is a discussion about testing or not and its benefits are discussed. More specifically on the automation part of it
  • A gentle introduction to TDD - TDD is introduced as a methodology and describes its different flavors
  • The many types of tests in software testing - Integration? End-to-end? Acceptance? Let’s see how they fit from a testing point of view
  • The differences between frontend and backend - Tips that are hidden from practitioners’ point of view writing tests for client and server applications.
2. Changing your mindset
3. Building software with tests X software without tests
4. Frameworks available for testing
5. Test doubles
7. Advanced topics
7. Strategies for testing

Resources