Test-driven development and happiness

Me: Happiness is a test suite that passes.
@philiph: Do you practice test-driven development for your happiness?
Me: Why, yes, actually, I do. It gives me a tangible sense of accomplishment and minimizes my mouse-clicking. =)

Developers find their own balance of how much project structure works with them. Some people like seat-of-their-pants coding. Others want detailed architecture diagrams. Me, I’m getting the hang of agile development practices, and I really enjoy using them.

Test-driven development, for example. Yes, I could just plunge ahead and write Drupal code, and I could test it by clicking on buttons and typing into forms. I don’t particularly like using the mouse or doing repetitive actions, so I write tests for functionality and occasionally for web interaction. Tests also mean that  I can check small pieces of functionality before I have to build a web interface. And when something breaks – not if, but when – tests help me narrow down the error.

It’s so satisfying to see the tests pass, too.

There are tests that exercise functionality, and tests that set up test data just the way we like it so that we can demonstrate features or try things out using the web interface. One of my team members showed me a wonderful technique for repeatable, well-structured test data by using a spreadsheet to generate PHP code. I’ve been extending the pattern for other things.

Drupal + Simpletest is awesome. It can’t handle everything, but it makes my Drupal life better. Happy developers write happy code!

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