Comments on: TDD as if you meant it – revisited

By: Johan Martinsson

Johan Martinsson — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:42:11 +0000

We’re trying this exercise in our local ( http://groups.google.fr/group/cara-dojo ). And I have some questions, the most important one being : where do encapsulation come from?

In my result I have no objects with state, and I expose simple types (List of integers) everywhere. It seems unnatural, however if I strictly follow the ‘rules’ well I don’t see how a object Field or Player would spring up.

Sure the resulting code is very simple. And I do see the benefit of the extremely incremental nature of it. But I’m unhappy about the lack of encapsulation in the result. If someone could have a quick look I’d very much appreciate it.

http://github.com/martinsson/cara-dojos/blob/master/ticTacToe/src/main/java/ticTacToe/Game.java
http://github.com/martinsson/cara-dojos/blob/master/ticTacToe/src/test/java/ticTacToe/TicTacToeTest.java

I also found that the coding of implementation IN the test has a backside : I can’t code by intent, so I have the impression of tackling all problems at once : what to test and how to write the code. This is to me one of the important benefits of TDD. Anyone felt the same? Will that pass with experience?

And yet another question while I’m at it : Once I’ve moved a function to the implementation class I can still modify it?

By: Practice, Code Exercises, and Code Katas : Steve Smith's Blog

Practice, Code Exercises, and Code Katas : Steve Smith's Blog — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:45:31 +0000

[...] TDD As If You Meant It: Tic-Tac-Toe: A similar writeup, this time using Tic-Tac-Toe. [...]

By: Alan Baljeu

Alan Baljeu — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:00:44 +0000

Interesting how even though the test drives the code, many different solutions were created.

By: Amy Thorne

Amy Thorne — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:00:55 +0000

I just want to thank you again for leading this session. I’d read your previous article about the exercise at the Software Craftsmanship 2009 conference and was pretty jealous, because it sounded like a great learning experience.

So I really appreciated you sharing it and being willing to play the role of the “annoying git.”

I agree that tic-tac-toe was a great domain choice for the 2 hour time slot.

And I agree with a lot of the comments from your original post about the interesting lessons from it, such as Keith’s: http://gojko.net/2009/02/27/thought-provoking-tdd-exercise-at-the-software-craftsmanship-conference/#comment-41245

By: Colin Jack

Colin Jack — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:50:51 +0000

I liked the idea too and it was a good session.

As you discuss though it might be worth thinking about what requirements are delivered and in what order.

After finishing 1-4 we had a do nothing style implementation (return trues essentially) that didn’t reflect the real way you play the game (forgetting implementation for a second). I don’t mind ultra simple do nothing solutions, thats a part of TDD. However I normally then write another test that fails because the code under test can’t handle it (for example a test that expects us to return false), and it might be worth rethinking the requirements or their order to allow people to do that (even if it means someone acting as a tic-tac-toe domain expert to answer simple questions).

Definitely emphasized the fact that we all jump to assumptions though, and was great fun!