January 2025 Highlights: Simplified Mocking in TDD, Industry Insights, and Can't-Miss Online Sessions

Hello TDD Enthusiasts,

Hope your 2025 started with a great start. And to improve things, we’re here with our first edition of 2025. Bringing you fresh TDD insights and all the updates going around in the TDD world.

So without any further ado, let’s get started:

?? Topic of the Month: Simplifying Mocking in TDD

When developers adopt TDD, one of the first challenges they encounter is managing dependencies. Real-world applications rarely exist in isolation; they interact with databases, external APIs, third-party services, or other internal modules.

Testing these interactions in a controlled and predictable manner is critical for achieving reliable, maintainable code. This is where mocking steps in as an essential tool, simplifying TDD by imitating complex dependencies. But it comes with its fair share of challenges:

• You have to understand every dependency’s exact behavior.
• You create mocks manually, then constantly update them as things change.
• Even after all that, mocks rarely replicate real-world behavior, leading to flaky tests and wasted debugging time.

Mocking which is supposed to ease out the entire test generation process, instead becomes a bottleneck here. To get it right, we’ve built a tool that automatically mocks your app’s dependencies during testing. It analyzes your app’s real-world API traffic and generates tests that mirror how your app is used.

• allows developers to mock database states, third-party APIs, and inter-service contracts to test code.
• plus, mocks update automatically. Do away from the need to write or update mocks completely.

Here’s the link to the complete video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neAEx0wtc-k&t=452s

?? Highlighted Experts' Posts on TDD

• Andrea Laforgia– "TDD and agile are a perfect match"

Andrea Laforgia suggests that TDD is better as a design tool than merely a testing approach. By writing tests first, developers can identify necessary components and ensure modular, well-structured code.

Read it here

• Allen Holub – “TDD is a development strategy and not a testing strategy”

Allen criticizes the misuse of technical terms like TDD, asserting that it is a precise development strategy defined by Kent Beck, not a testing strategy.

Read it here

• Valentina (Cupa?) Jemuovi?– "Writing tests at the end = running around in circles"

Valentina highlights that writing tests after code causes inefficiencies, while TDD offers shorter feedback loops and avoids issues like untestable code and poor interfaces.

Read it here

• Jelena Cupa?– "Write clear, meaningful test names"

Jelena Cupac advises naming tests to clearly describe the specific behavior being tested, avoiding vague terms like "success.”

Read it here

?? Upcoming Events and Webinars

• Mock APIs, Message Queues, and Databases in One Place

Date: 29 January 2025, Online

Mocking APIs, message queues, and databases can be challenging. Discover how to automatically generate mocks for them and learn strategies to keep your mocks up-to-date with minimal effort. Register here

• TDD: Theme and Variations

Date: Available Online

Taking our mocking of the TDD concept further, this TDD talk will help you understand claims about TDD range from “absurd” to “essential” to “damaging” to “joyous.” Watch it here

• Ignite Summit: 2025

Date: 25 February 2025, Virtual Event

Ignite Summit is the top event for developers exploring Apache Ignite, distributed databases, and in-memory computing to solve speed and scale challenges. Register here

Have a good day! ??

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