Software engineering has evolved over time and the methods used for developing an application or software have been updated also. Thanks to the continuous evolution in technology, there are various methods which are proved excellent when developing software using them. And Test Driven development is one of these excellent strategies which leads to the successful development of an application.
What is Test Driven Development?
Test Driven development is basically a way derived in software engineering which instructs a developer to design a unit test before they start with the coding. Hence, the test cases and test code are developed and designed before the actual coding of the application begins. Hence, implementing the concept of Extreme Programming, Test Driven development focuses on delivering error-free software which works its best to deliver excellent results. It is also known for its agile context and how it supports the rapid but excellent development of an application or software.
The Reason Behind Growth of Agile Methodology and Extreme Programming
Following the V-model, the test phase was executed once the entire product code was built. However, this leads to complex testing as there are millions of lines to be compiled and executed and finding the mistakes and bugs from these code files is extremely tiresome. Therefore, the efficiency of a tester and the test code developed reduces and it leads to a code that is not entirely error-free. Hence, the concepts of agile software development and extreme programming came to the rescue as it ensures the testing is conducted simultaneously the software code is being developed.
Hence, being one of the important concepts of both, Test Driven development is all about testing the code rigorously as much as possible to ensure no mistakes are to be found. Let’s be practical. Finding errors from a few lines of code is a lot easier than finding from hundreds and thousands of lines! Therefore, Test Driven development is becoming increasingly popular in the software development industry when developing an application or software where time is not much a constraint.
How is it executed?
- First, develop and design the test.
- Run the designed tests and see if any of the tests fail.
- Upgrade the chunk of codes to pass the test and rerun the tests.
- Continue rerunning and refactoring until the code passes all the tests.
Are Developers Happy with it?
Being a part of the software development team, each one is responsible for getting an excellent application developed and is error-free and according to the requirements specified. Test Driven development certainly consumes more time than the basic models like Waterfall and others, but the efficiency and excellence of the output say it all.
Hence, considering the developers’ point of view, Test Driven development helps them a lot by letting them improve the efficiency of their code and deliver the code that runs excellently and is tested so rigorously that it is almost impossible for it to fail the customers’ expectations. Also, the companies looking to hire nodejs developer and considering other such modern technology based recruitments test the knowledge of Test Driven development and other agile methodology concepts as these technologies are designed to support them and the developer must know them to provide an excellent code to their recruiters.
Principles of Test Driven Development
Test Driven development consists of three phases:
Red
Designs the first test that is sure to fail. Which means a unit test is constructed which even considers compilation failure as the test failure.
Green
The code for the application is written in a way that can pass all the tests successfully. The aim here would be producing a code that can pass all the unit tests and get the desired results, as in a green bar of success for every test being designed and developed and conducted on the code.
Refactor
Now is the time to make the quality of the code superior. The chunks of code which have passed the unit tests are refactored with the intention of improving the performance of the code written. This means changes in architecture, presentation, code optimization that can achieve the optimum time and space complexity. However, there is one thing to bear in mind clear and that is, no green marked tests should change to red. In essence, the code should still pass the tests even after refactoring it again.
Benefits of Adopting Test Driven Development
Thorough Requirement Analysis
As the test cases are supposed to be designed and developed earlier than the coding takes place, it gives your team a chance to thorough examine the requirements specified by the clients and ensure proper steps are taken to fulfill all those requirements by developing accurate test cases.
Improves Productivity
As the developers are having the freedom of developing and testing only a limited amount of code or say a chunk of code and then test it, the productivity of theirs increases as they are free from the worries of developing codes of longer lengths and execute the testing on these giant codes and find and correct the errors.
Hence, adapting to Test Driven development for your next project is advisable as it helps in achieving the quality of the application you have always desired to achieved and also ensures the productivity of your code and the developers remain intact and only improve. Supporting the agile development concepts, it provides one of the best ways to get your application developed right away ensuring no requirements are to be missed.
