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.

1. Introduction
   • My path to Test Driven Development - TDD revamped, five years and many more to come
   • What is testing?
   • What is test driven development?
     • Triangulation in Test-driven Development
   • Should you test?
   • Types of test
   • The differences between frontend and backend
2. Changing your mindset
   • Katas - why, when and how
3. Building software with tests X software without tests
4. Frameworks available for testing
   • PHPUnit
     • PHPUnit coverage on vagrant
   • Jest
   • Jasmine
   • Testing library
   • Junit
5. Test doubles
   • The history
   • Mocks, dummies, spies, fakes - testing your code
   • Are true mocks evil?
     • Using Fakes for testing
6. Advanced topics
   • ARE YOU NOT USING TDD?! - PART 1
   • ARE YOU NOT USING TDD?! – PART 2 (Legacy code)
   • Is TDD dead ?
   • On one hundred percent code coverage - how to approach coverage and void misusing it
   • Jest asserts beyond equals - tips for improving assertions
   • Jest timers and reactjs - A use case for using jest time-related functions
   • Test Driven Development anti-patterns
     • TDD anti-patterns - The liar, excessive setup, the giant, slow poke
     • TDD anti-patterns - The mockery, the inspector, the generous leftovers and the local hero
     • TDD anti-patterns - The nitpicker, the secret catcher, the dodger and the Loudmouth
     • TDD anti-patterns - The greedy catcher, The sequencer, Hidden dependency and The enumerator
     • TDD anti-patterns - The stranger, The operating system evangelist, Success against all odds and The free ride
     • TDD anti-patterns - The One, The Peeping Tom, The Flash and The Jumper
   • Outside-in
     • A working skeleton to get started with outside-in TDD
7. Strategies for testing
   • Rethinking legacy code and testing

References

• A Frontend Web Developer’s Guide to Testing - Explore leading web test automation frameworks and their future driven by low-code and AI