Summary Motley: There is no harm shortcutting a few steps of development to meet a deadline. Some up-front check-in steps just take too much time. Maven: Slow down to go fast. Obey check-in checklists or you will pay for it later in the development cycle. Pre-check...

Summary Motley: A tester's job is to find bugs, so measure them on the amount of bugs they find. More test automation is always better. Maven: Do not measure testers by the amount of bugs they report. Think of the test team as more a quality assurance team than a quality control team. Too...

Summary Motley: Just use a batch file to execute unit tests - it's easy and quick. Maven: Use a unit test framework to write and execute unit tests. A framework makes tests easy to write, executes tests quickly and consistently, and provides features that make your life easier, such as logging...

Summary Motley: A simple if-then-else hook is the simplest and best way to inject a mock object. Maven: First, you have to design to interfaces. Then, techniques like dependency injection, factories, and endo-testing are more effective ways to inject mock objects. ______________________________...

Summary Motley: To get high code coverage, we should be testing both public and private methods Maven: Only test public methods. Testing private methods gets in the way of refactoring ______________________________ [Context: Maven checks in on Motley's unit testing practices and...

Summary Motley: Contracts don't apply to software - leave them for baseball players and cell phone providers Maven: Contracts (preconditions, postconditions, invariants) help drive your unit tests ______________________________ [Context: Motley is all excited as he has started to...

Summary Motley: If I hit 100% code coverage for my tests, then there is nothing left to test. Maven: 100% line coverage does not necessarily mean you have full test coverage. You have to consider condition coverage as well. ______________________________ [Context: Motley is all excited...

Summary Motley: Every time I make a change in refactoring I either cause compile problems or break functionality. Refactoring is slow and not worth the effort. Maven: Use tools to refactor and leverage unit tests to improve your confidence that your refactoring does not break functionality...

Summary Motley: Refactoring takes too much time - I have to ship you know! Maven: Refactoring leads to much more maintainable code, and if you have tests in place, the return on investment far outweighs the cost. ______________________________ [Context: Motley has just embarked on...

Summary Motley: Tests need to validate code that has already been written - not the other way around. Maven: Writing tests before you code allows the tests to drive your code while providing more sound requirements validation. ______________________________ [Context: Motley is thinking...

Summary Motley: You can't possibly write tests before code - there's nothing to test. Maven: Writing tests for a method before coding it has all kinds of design advantages. ______________________________ [Context: Motley has been writing unit tests for a week. Maven wants to take...

Summary Motley: Unit tests take too long to execute. I'm not going to bother. Maven: Unit tests need to run quickly - you need to execute them frequently. Mock objects can help. ______________________________ [Context: Motley has been writing unit tests for a couple of days, but...

Summary Motley: Unit testing is the test team's job! I am not paid to write tests. Maven: White box (unit) tests help with code quality and give you confidence to change your code. ______________________________ [Context: During a previous conversation about debugging, Motley stated...

Summary Motley: I rely on the debugger when I am writing code. Without it, I'd have a really hard time tracking down all the bugs in my code. Maven: Write code as if the debugger does not even exist. Include unit tests, assertions, tracing, logging, static analysis, and internal consistency...