Summary

In this chapter, you got the general understanding of TDD practice and insights into what TDD is and what it isn't. You learned that it is a way to design code through a short and repeatable cycle called Red-Green-Refactor. Failure is an expected state that should not only be embraced, but enforced throughout the TDD process. This cycle is so short that we move from one phase to another with great speed.

While code design is the main objective, tests created throughout the TDD process are a valuable asset that should be utilized and severely impact our view of traditional testing practices. We went through the most common of those practices, such as white-box and black-box testing, tried to put them into the TDD perspective, and showed benefits that they can bring to each other.

You discovered that mocks are very important tools that are often a must when writing tests. Finally, we discussed how tests can and should be utilized as executable documentation and how TDD can make debugging much less necessary.

Now that we are armed with theoretical knowledge, it is time to set up the development environment and get an overview and comparison of different testing frameworks and tools.