Name: Growing object-oriented software
ISBN: 9780321574442

Growing object-oriented software

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is now an established technique for delivering better software faster. TDD is based on a simple idea: Write tests for your code before you write the code itself. However, this "simple" idea takes skill and judgment to do well. Now there's a practical guide to TDD that takes you beyond the basic concepts. Drawing on a decade of experience building real-world systems, two TDD pioneers show how to let tests guide your development and “grow” software that is coherent, reliable, and maintainable. Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce describe the processes they use, the design principles they strive to achieve, and some of the tools that help them get the job done. Through an extended worked example, you’ll learn how TDD works at multiple levels, using tests to drive the features and the object-oriented structure of the code, and using Mock Objects to discover and then describe relationships between objects. Along the way, the book systematically addresses challenges that development teams encounter with TDD—from integrating TDD into your processes to testing your most difficult features.

What Hacker News says

pramodbiligiriJun 2026

My approach (with LLMs especially) aligns more with what's outlined in "Growing OO Software Guided by Tests" (https://growing-object-oriented-software.com/toc.html). Chapter 4 there says "First, Test a Walking Skeleton", and Chapter 5 has "Start Each Feature with an Acceptance Test". I think it comes down to: get something working end-to-end first in a verifiable way, and then keep refining both the feature and its tests (preferable with TDD).

I've noticed that LLMs tend to generate multiple testcases in one shot (which is not how humans usually go about TDD), and also they don't start with Integration Tests, unless instructed to do so.

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squirrelApr 2024

The obligatory definitive guide, of which the author appears to be unaware: http://www.growing-object-oriented-software.com/

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squirrelJun 2023

A very good way to use mocks (not like illustrated here) is explained in the GOOS book by Freeman and Pryce: http://www.growing-object-oriented-software.com/

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crabmusketAug 2021

To the author: if you haven't read POODR, I highly recommend that. It's the book that felt the most "real OOP" to me. No `class Dog extends Animal` in sight. It's written by one of those Smalltalkers, and I think it's got a lot of very valuable ideas about software design, not just OOP specifically.

The "callback-y" approach in Growing Object-Oriented Software sounds fascinating.

> Immediately I remind myself that the implementation from the book ignores the problem of persistence completely. If you close that application it loses all the state. I think this is not an accident. This is where things go wrong for OOP really fast.

This is a really good point.

EDIT: I see you really did not like 99 Bottles of OOP, which is by the author of POODR. In that case maybe her way of explaining things doesn't agree with you and you should skip it!

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sciurusAug 2021

I don't know anything about the other two books, but the one discussed in depth is well-respected.

http://www.growing-object-oriented-software.com/praise.html

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insertnicknameAug 2020

It's all in this book: http://www.growing-object-oriented-software.com/

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