Having used the GildedRose recently as the subject of a coding dojo, I thought it would also make an interesting subject for some experimentation with Cucumber. Cucumber is a tool that allows you to use natural language to specify executable Acceptance Tests. The GildedRose exercise, originally created by Bobby Johnson, can be found on github, in both C# (the original), and Java (my copy). This code kata is a refactoring assignment, where the requirements are given together with a piece of existing code and the programmer is expected to add some functionality. If you take one look at that existing code, though, you’ll see that you really need to clean it up before adding that extra feature:

In the team I’m currently working with, the need for regression testing was becoming obvious. The team is working on a web MVC-type framework, and has been running into the results of limited testing: quality wasn’t just low, it was unknown. The usual excuses were there, pressure to release, and interruptions by unplanned work. Usually, the unplanned work is caused by the same lack of quality that is probably caused by pressure to release.

I came across this post by Martin Fowler, on the Strangler Application pattern, and its accompanying paper. This brought back memories of some of my own adventures in rework, some fond, others not so much. In all cases, though, I think they were very valuable lessons on what to do and not to do when reworking existing systems. No reason not to share those lessons, especially as some of them were rather painful and expensive to learn. The paper linked above is a success story, mine are more the kind you tell your children about to keep them away from dysfunctional projects. This is not because these projects were done by horrible or incompetent people, or completely ineffective organisations. They weren’t. But sometimes a few bad decisions can stack up, and result into the kind of war stories developers share after a few beers.

Last year, I posted an overview of some books every programmer should read. Those still stand, and I find more and more examples where I would like to re-iterate the advice to read those books.

This post is about other books, though. Books related to Agile and Lean principles and practices. There are many books on those subjects, and quite a number of those have become standard-works. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find an Agilist that has not read Agile Estimation and Planning, User Stories Applied, Agile Project Management with Scrum, etc. If you’re lucky, they’ll even know Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns and Practices.

[EDIT: Thanks to Hubert Iwaniuk, there’s now a playlist to accompany your reading of this post!]

[EDIT: There’s now also an XP version of this: XP Is Classic Rock]

I’ve had a number of occasions where people, usually working in a very strict, waterfall, environment, have voiced the opinion that ‘all that agile stuff’ is just an excuse to go ‘back to’ cowboy programming and rock ’n’ roll development.