Interview Driven

I've recruited an inexpensive live-in Python / C++ developer of Google Tor Project infamy from one of the Baltic states to pair program with me before he heads off to do a Masters degree elsewhere in London as the gumtree plea for someone to pair with has met with silent derision, I'm sure.

So far, I've shown him ReSharper; during the demonstration I find I don't know my own shortcut keys. Tools > Options > Keyboard suggests I have none setup. Why does this Visual Studio 2008 dialog show me only four items out of thousands at a time? Why does Visual Studio 2010 do the same? First the canonical Calculator.Add() example to make sure we're on the same page. Next, the Reload Countdown problem from the TDD problems list to make sure we can isolate on the process without being distracted by keywords, syntax or an unfamiliar API.

The naming convention for unit tests discussion briefly threatens to spiral beyond the seconds allocated. Found Bryan Cook's useful post on Unit Test Naming convention & Guidelines.

Pausing often to chat about names of variables and methods means noticeably slower progress than writing the code alone without being test-driven. As we do more of these it might be interesting to do some metrics. To tackle the problem with solution familiarity - by that I mean being able to go faster the second time round having already solved the problem once before whether using a test-driven approach or not - we'll alternate between having the first attempt being test-driven and test-later.

It feels a little odd to be doing this now, about forty-two Internet years after everyone else did. Thanks, however, to Benjamin Mitchell for getting us started. We're considering attending the London Python Dojo in two days. This looks like it's going to be interesting.

Notes

Ancient CodeBetter post with .NET Test-Driven Development Resources links.