Professional Test-Driven Development with C#: Developing Real World Applications with TDD

1

The Road to Test-Driven Development

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• How has software development evolved to bring us to TDD
• What an Agile methodology is and how does it differs from traditional waterfall-based technologies
• What TDD is and what the benefits of using it are

Test-Driven Development (TDD) has become one of the most important concepts and practices in modern software development. To understand why this is, consider the history of the practice of creating software. TDD was created through an almost evolutionary process. It came about as a response to the difficulties and challenges of writing software, but there was no real plan for its creation. It's a classic case of the traits of a thing that make that thing more successful and stronger being propagated and the traits that lead to failure being discarded. The practices of TDD were not created by any single company or individual; they rose from countless discussions (or, more likely, arguments) about what was done in the past, why it failed, and what could be done better. If TDD is a structure, such as a house, its foundation is created from failure. Failed projects, whose developers knew there had to be a better way, are what TDD has been built upon.

In this chapter you learn about the history of software development and how the methodology of managing software projects has moved from favoring waterfall to iterative to agile methodologies. You'll learn how the practice of Test-Driven Development is a key component ...