Achieving Test Driven Nirvana

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Martin Harris

Cuban Car: Martin Harris

Well perhaps not Nirvana then, but at least having a suitable level of test coverage.

I wanted to write an article around the uptake of test driven development. Scrum and agile are hard to do well. If you break these down, you often find that the components are pretty challenging too. TDD is difficult but it has gained widespread recognition at the intellectual level. On the ground though the practice can be patchy. Why?

Before writing this article I had a look around to see what else had been written. This article on Geiger’s Counterpoint sums up my thoughts exactly. Its such a good article that I hardly have anything left to say. In fact neatly I can just provide some bullet points!

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KeySet v EntrySet code tidy

Posted on March 31, 2010 by Martin Harris

Its astounding how often I find maps being used like this.

for(String name: names.keySet()) {
    mymap.put(mymap.get(name),name);
}

Its inefficient because you have to fetch the keys and perform a lookup in the map with the key.

Instead using the EntrySet you can get all the keys and values in one hit. This saves having to perform the map lookup.

for (Entry<String, String> entry : entrySet) {
    mymap.put(entry.getValue(),entry.getKey());
}

Google Objects.equal, useful but be careful.

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Martin Harris

Google have a nice equals method to make boiler plate equals easier to read. Particularly good if you have many attributes in the method. http://publicobject.com/2007/09/coding-in-small-with-google-collections_8175.html

Be careful to check that your objects are consistent with equals though. I have mentioned this before.
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TimeUnit use it more of the Time please!

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Martin Harris

Time for my first blog of the year. Yea! Mind you its a bit small, but then perhaps that is a good thing.

Look at these two setters. Setter methods like the first example are very common. Take a look at the second its so much better. With the second the responsibility to convert is neatly delegated to another class instead of forcing the user of the api to work it out. In addition the programmer can supply hours, minutes or any other that TimeUnit supports.

public void setDuration(long durationInMs) {
    this.duration = durationInMs;
}

public void setDuration(long duration, TimeUnit timeUnit) {
    this.duration = timeUnit.toMillis(duration);
}

TimeUnit was brought to you by: java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit! Its handy, so use it!

Transient Technology

Next time you look it might be gone

Category Archives: software quality

Achieving Test Driven Nirvana

Continue reading →

KeySet v EntrySet code tidy

Google Objects.equal, useful but be careful.

TimeUnit use it more of the Time please!