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Working With Assertions Made on Arguments in Rhino Mocks

Today when modifying what we call an “order notifier” (essentially observers that are notified when an order is placed), I was having trouble figuring out why my test was failing. The project is written in C# and this test was using Rhino...

Published Wed, Mar 03 2010 10:44 PM by Chris Missal

Filed under: Testing, Best Practices, RhinoMocks, NUnit

Why is CruiseControl.Net Hiding My Test Results?

Some time ago, I noticed a CruiseControl.Net build report with thousands of unit tests passed, zero failed and a dozen or so skipped, suddenly showing that no tests were run: I immediately thought somebody did something really bad. After some digging...

Published Fri, Mar 03 2010 8:37 AM by Chris Missal

Filed under: Testing, NUnit, Continuous Integration

How I Approach a Defect

Lately I've been tracking some of the steps I go through in a given day or week. I was fixing a bug the other day when I decided that I should write down all the mental notes I refer to when addressing a problem like a bug in code. These are questions...

Published Tue, Feb 02 2010 12:11 AM by Chris Missal

Filed under: Testing, Best Practices, Development, Continuous Improvement

Actually Querying with the Specification Pattern

In my previous post, I talked about using the specification pattern for querying collections. I didn't actually show any code that does what I was talking about, I just showed the set-up and creation of specifications. The following is how you can put...

Published Wed, Sep 09 2009 9:25 AM by Chris Missal

Filed under: Testing, DRY, Design Patterns, Moq

Anti-Patterns and Worst Practices – Heisenbugs

As I mentioned before, a Heisenbug occurs when trying to check the state of an object. These types of defects are common with concurrency issues are present. Microsoft has put out a library to help diagnose these problems: CHESS ( http://msdn.microsoft...

Published Sat, May 05 2009 1:00 AM by Chris Missal

Filed under: Legacy Code, Testing, Best Practices, Design Principles

Anti-Patterns and Worst Practices – Monster Objects

Monster objects (or God objects ) know too much, or do too much; monster objects are nasty beasts. The term God object was coined because these objects are said to be “all-knowing”. I’m in favor of the term Monster objects because knowing...

Published Thu, May 05 2009 7:28 PM by Chris Missal

Filed under: SOLID, Testing, Design Principles, Design Patterns

Anti-Patterns and Worst Practices – You’re Doing it Wrong!

When shown ideal code, I think developers understand why it is favorable. When it is regarding Separation of Concerns (SoC) or Single Responsibility Principle ( SRP ) the consensus is something along the lines of “of course, that makes sense”...

Published Tue, May 05 2009 8:00 AM by Chris Missal

Filed under: SOLID, Legacy Code, Testing, Best Practices, Design Principles, DRY, Development

Unit Testing “Where’s The Dollar?”

I was given the following riddle today. I thought I’d right a unit test in C# to “prove” it. Three guys enter a hotel to stay for a night. The desk clerk tells them that one room is $30 per night. This is perfect as there are three men...

Published Wed, May 05 2009 9:46 AM by Chris Missal

Filed under: Testing, For Fun

Obvious Testing or: How I Learned to Stop Using the new keyword

Here’s a basic test; looks simple right? Well, that’s because it is. A new Order is given three different order items, each with a quantity of one. We assert (using nunit) that there are three OrderItems, then RemoveAllItems and assert that there are...

Published Thu, Mar 03 2009 9:19 PM by Chris Missal

Filed under: Testing

Need Help Spotting that Hard to Test Code?

I’m a big fan of Jon Lam's Vibrant Ink Visual Studio theme . Here’s why: If you look at the syntax highlighting in the following code, you’ll see some yellow text. In this theme, or any any other theme that does it well, you’ll...

Published Tue, Mar 03 2009 2:13 AM by Chris Missal

Filed under: SOLID, Testing, Best Practices, Design Principles

Ignoring Testing can be Explained, but Never Excused

Many individuals that practice software development will tell you the same thing; testing is vital. I’ve never worked at a place that “requires” automated testing . Any of the testing that we’ve automated was put in place as a...

Published Mon, Jan 01 2009 8:11 AM by Chris Missal

Filed under: Testing, Best Practices

Testing Your Code to Test Yourself

There was a time not too long ago when I was in the same company I work for today. I got my work done, I completed the tasks/projects assigned to me, I got paid and I enjoyed what I was doing. None of this has changed by the way, I still like my job and...

Published Thu, Jan 01 2009 6:57 AM by Chris Missal