xUnit Test Patterns - The Book

I have a deep respect to people writing books. Not only it's a commitment, but a hard work that may not be appreciated, despite all the efforts invested into creation of a such. Saying that, some books are just not as good as the hype around them. Unfortunately, I found "xUnit Test Patterns" by Gerard Meszaros not very pleasant for reading...

Do not misunderstand me - the book has a lot of knowledge and practical experience behind it. I am absolutely sure that the author knows very well what he wrote about. The problem I found with the book was the way it laid out and presented. And in particular:

  • If you are a novice in TDD, this book is way too dry and overwhelming. I would almost compare it to the "Design Patterns" by GoF reading experience when you have never touched C++/Smalltalk in your entire life and the concept of patterns in pretty new to you. What I would like the "xUnit Test Patterns" to be like for a novice (or at least a few chapters in the begging) is something similar to "Head First Design Patterns".
  • If you are into TDD already, and seeking for ways to improve what you are doing - no book will help, but practice and lots of it. At the same time, it is good to read the theory to understand what should be avoided or alternatives to what you are already doing. Unfortunately, this book is not a pleasant reading, as every single page has at least one page-reference, and that has at least another one, and so on, and so on. You get destructed so by often page-jumps that you loose the content.

Finally the verdict: you can have this book as a reference, but not as a reading material. Oh, and if your shelf needs a solidity boost, it's damn good one for that :)

1 Comment

  • Sean,

    I actually really enjoyed reading through parts of this book. For me, the focus wasn't on learning TDD, but rather on learning how to improve my unit testing. For that, I found even the introduction was teaching me lots in a small amount of time.

    My background is more of a junior dev with no mentor and a lot of passion for becoming better. This book helped me rethink unit testing and helped me understand that unit tests are just like any code, and they deserve to be treated with the same care and principles.

    Again, I understand your thoughts. We both came at the book from different angles, and have come away with different experiences.

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