Paul Lockwood gave an interesting presentation last night to the .NET UG on TDD. I will admit that haven't integrated this methodology deeply into my own development habits (yet). I do however recognize the benefits, and fully intend to incorporate it into my habits, just taking things one step at a time as I push my own skills to ever higher levels. So to me, the discussion was quite timely.

Listening to audience feedback, it appears that a number of folks (Rusty, Marcie, etc) are already leveraging this technique... and have some really positive opinions of it. When smart people are recommending something with such enthusiasm, it is generally a wise thing to pay attention.

One thing I would have liked to have seen is an end-to-end example of the process itself. I have seen unit tests before, I have even used NUnit on a few projects, but never to much success. I always felt like I was "not getting it". I get the impression (mainly from Rusty's comments), that this is normal, and there is a point of critical mass, serendipity if you will, where it all just starts to "make sense", and your Unit Tests become the first-class citizens that they deserve to be. I want to reach that point, but am shooting blind right now... a slight nudge towards that light is really what I need I think.

My current development habits have served me well (I have been told on more than one occasion that I am the most meticulous developer ever to pick up a keyboard), but I wish to push it to the next level. Zero defects in QA Iteration 1 is the Holy Grail. So now I at least have an idea of what I need to work towards. The next step is finding the best path to get there.

It was brought to my attention last night that I have been neglecting to update my weblog lately, at least not as much as I used to. In my defense, I have been slammed with delivery of a fairly decent size project, along with preparing my home for sale (and buying/building a new one).

Once this project winds down a little, expect to see more activity here. I have finished a few more books, and will post reviews of them. We (the Atlanta MS Professionals) have some cool stuff coming, and for that matter so does the C# Developers group. Once things get moving I will post more about that.

Ciao for now.

Last night, the Atlanta MS Professionals User Group was treated to an outstanding presentation by one of the great gurus of Windows programming - Jeffrey Richter of Wintellect. His coverage of the internals of CLR thread termination and associated concerns was extremely enlightening. I would rank this talk as easily being in the top 5 presentations I have ever had the opportunity to attend (and I have seen a LOT in recent years).

Anyways, Jeffrey has a new book coming out in March ("CLR Via C#: Applied Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 Programming"), which he claims will be his last. I made sure to pre-order a copy ($50!) so I can divine some of his wisdom and insight.

 

I have a new batch of invitations available to give out... if you are still using the old MSN Messenger, then shoot me an email and I will hook you up. First come, first served.

Update: All invitations are used up now, sorry.