Ward Cunningham, Cunningham and Cunningham, Inc.
Brian Ingerson, Social Text, Inc.
Track: Emerging Topics
Date: Wednesday, July 09
Time: 10:45am - 11:30am
Location: Salon I
The open source "Framework for Integrated Test" (fit), puts developers and business experts on the same page. Extreme programmers write tests first and let them guide their coding. This framework, welcomed by extreme programmers last year, extends test-driven design to the business experts they serve. In this talk we adopt fit as a necessary step toward serving business, and a good step towards serving each other, too.
How it works: fit lets experts write "facts" using proprietary products like Word or Excel or free systems like Wiki. These facts are interpreted by fixtures -- a parameterized version of a unit test. Developers write code to satisfy tests. In the eyes of their customers, their "track record" is about tests satisfied and does not unduly emphasize their choice of technology.
Fit implementations in Java, C#, Perl, Python, Ruby and Lisp make language "substitution" a reasonable strategy. We will demonstrate a Wiki customized to be a specification/test repository and show how a one-click script can run the same test on several platforms.
Fit works well with powerful scripting languages. Further, it is the means to escape any bad connotation of scripting in a business context. It is argued that some form of test driven development is necessary and sufficient for "scripting" the enterprise, and that fit is the way to write those tests.
