Dave Farley describes the London and Chicago schools of Test Driven Development

Did you know there are two schools of thought when it comes to Test Driven Development? I didn’t until Dave Farley’s video Are You Chicago or London When It Comes To TDD landed in my feed last week. The title piqued my interest and I was delighted to find a great discussion of approaches to TDD and how they complement each other.

If you’re a seasoned test driven developer, or merely TDD-curious, this is a really good refresher.

Monday Links 9

When Developers Leave - Where Does the Knowledge Go?

Software development isn’t straightforward. Software projects are built to the unique requirements for a unique company. If the software was standard, all companies could use the same, but like the company, the software is unique. Asking a developer to look at software created on a project, isn’t like a dentist looking in a mouth. It’s complex, confusing, and takes months to understand. Building up relationships with other developers/consultants/customers takes a month.

Job title vs job position: What is the difference?

The job title and job position concepts regularly overlap and feed into each other, it’s just that one of them (title) highlights your spot in the company, while the other (position) is more focused on your skill and competence levels. Ultimately, both will play a role in shaping your professional journey.

Michael Feathers on Object Oriented and Functional approaches to programming

This clip popped up in my Youtube feed and piqued my interest. A snippet of a longer conversation between Dave Farley and Michael Feathers, in this clip Michael Feathers talks about how OOP and FP can look quite similar, and goes on to talk about the “surface area” of tests and how that relates to the traditional OO concept of separation of concerns. It’s a nice and nerdy 10 minutes.