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Improve Your iOS Frank Cucumber Acceptance Tests

Here are some tips I've learned to build more readable, flexible acceptance tests for iOS devices using Frank and Cucumber.  See the full article on the Cyrus Cylinder:

The Cyrus Cylinder: Improve Your iOS Frank Cucumber Acceptance Tests

Stories of Adopting Alternative JVM Languages in Java Projects in Better Software Magazine

Groovy, JRuby, Scala, and Clojure are some of the most widely used alternative Java Virtual Machine (JVM) languages today.  I spoke with several developers who adopted one of these languages in a Java-based project.  This article ("Alternative JVM Languages for Java Projects") tells their stories - which language they picked, why they picked it, and how they integrated it with their existing Java code base or infrastructure.

This article includes stories from the following people:

• Moss Collum: Gradually migrating code from Java to Groovy
• Kris Nuttycombe: Starting to use Scala to write tests for a Java project
• Najati Imam: Seamlessly deploying JRuby on Rails in an existing Java infrastructure
• Bob McWhirter: Combining some of the best parts of Java with Ruby language to build something new: TorqueBox
• Dan Chamberlain: Using Clojure to more naturally and succinctly model the business problem domain

 

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This article appears in the September/October 2011 issue of Better Software Magazine.

Thanks to Heather Shanholtzer, Lee Copeland, Jean Middleton, and Cheryl Burke at Better Software Magazine for many things - the opportunity to write this article, top-notch editing, and valuable feedback.  Thanks to my friends Alex Baranosky, Moss Collum, Paul Infield-Harm, Joe Leo, Jason Reid and colleagues at Cyrus Innovation for their formative suggestions for the article.

An Introduction to Scala article in November/December 2010 Better Software Magazine

Scala is a programming language that blends functional and object-oriented language features. Scala programs run on the Java Virtual Machine and can easily interact with Java code. Learn how Scala can yield concise, safe, and compatible code, and how you can start learning Scala on your own.

My article "An Introduction to Scala" is now in print in the November/December 2010 issue of Better Software Magazine.

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See the online Sticky Notes and Further Reading sections for footnotes and further references.

Special thanks to Daniel Spiewak for the technical review and edits. Thanks to Paul Blair, Najati Imam, Eric Stolten, and Joe Leo for their reviews and feedback.  Thanks to Lee Copeland, Heather Shanholtzer, Cheryl Burke, and the publication team at Better Software Magazine for their support and top-notch editing.

Addendum

In the article I wrote "Scala is developed at a university—not funded commercially by a big company like Java and Sun/Oracle—so its resources are more limited."  Since the time of writing, Martin Odersky and colleagues have formed Scala Solutions, a company that provides commercial support, tools, and training for Scala.

Blogging at StickyMinds.com

I've started a blog on the StickyMinds website; I'll try to post a new entry every week on topics which include software development, process, and testing. 

This brings up the question: "How do I decide which site to use for any given blog post?"  My current strategy is to post the more code and tool-specific items here (such as GWT, Scala, etc.) and post the rest at the StickyMinds blog site.  I'm sure this will change, so watch this space.

Thanks to Joey McAllister and the folks at StickyMinds for this great opportunity.

Testing Tips Article in May/June 2009 Better Software Magazine

Is your team starting to write automated tests but you don't know where or how to start?  Have you test-driven a stack but you're not sure how to apply the TDD techniques to your project?  I've written about my experiences helping teams kick-start their test-writing in the article "What to Expect When You're Automating Testing: Test-last Tips from an Agile Expert".  It's now in print in the May/June 2009 issue of Better Software Magazine.  You can download the article in PDF format below.

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Thanks to Pedro Yang for his feedback.  Continued thanks to the team at Better Software including Lee Copeland, Joey McAllister, Jean Middleton, and Heather Shanholtzer for their superb editing help.

Update: Thanks to Boris for catching the year typo.

Test-First GWT article in November 2008 Better Software Magazine

Part two of my series on Google Web Toolkit, "Google Web Toolkit: Writing Ajax Applications Test First" (download article), is now in print in the November 2008 issue of Better Software magazine.  This article is a tutorial on applying Test Driven Development practices to build GWT applications.  It introduces GWT's testing support including GWTTestCase, describes the Model-View-Presenter design pattern, and includes test and production code samples.

Thanks again to my reviewers for their suggestions and feedback: Steve Berczuk, Paul Infield-Harm, Mushfeq Khan, Joe Leo, Michelle Osborne and Ariel Valentin.  Big thanks to Sumit Chandel of the GWT team for his technical feedback and editing and to Steve Freeman for his help with the JMock example.  Thanks to Lee Copeland, Chuck Allison, Heather Shanholtzer and the team at Better Software Magazine for the opportunity and excellent technical editing.

See the Sticky Notes online for infrastructure tips, GWTTestCase gotchas, and additional reference materials.

Part one of the series was published in the October 2008 issue.

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Related posts:

• Strategies for testing GWT Widgets and View Components
• Testing JSON parsing using JavaScript Overlay Types in GWT 1.5

Intro to GWT article in October 2008 Better Software Magazine

My article "Google Web Toolkit: Your Shortcut to Ajax Web Applications" (download article) is now in print in the October 2008 issue of Better Software Magazine.  This is an introduction to GWT and will be followed in an upcoming issue by an article that demonstrates using GWT to build Ajax applications test-first.

Thank you to my reviewers for all your feedback: Steve Berczuk, Mushfeq Khan, Joe Leo, and Ariel Valentin.  Many thanks to Sumit Chandel of the GWT team and Brad Neuberg at Google for their technical feedback and support.  Thank you to Lee Copeland, Chuck Allison, Heather Shanholtzer and the team at Better Software Magazine for the opportunity and excellent technical editing.

Updated Oct 13, 2008: Added link to download a PDF copy of the article.