Re: [boost] Interest in a Behavior Driven Development Framework

From: Kevin Wheatley (hxpro_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-09-14 09:15:40

David Abrahams wrote:
> Yeah, OK, so there's a DSL... not a very convincing one either,
> especially in light of the use of "should"
> 
> 
>>It's not different from TDD, but it's a clarification of it. 
> 
> 
> Somehow it was much less clear to me, because it was sold as some kind
> of revolution.
> 

A revolution in many small steps maybe, but I agree its not a quantum 
shift.

> And the distinction between state and behavior is extremely weak, at
> least as presented so far.

One of the key ideas behind the BDD is that its trying to work around 
the image that the word 'test' has out in the world of programming at 
large. In a technical sense it isn't really all that different.

However when you introduce the idea of customers writing the 
specification along with the developers you need a common language 
between the two, and thats where the DSL bit comes in.

As an example I was at the Google Test Automation conference last week 
and there was an interesting presentation where once the 'punctuation' 
characters were removed (changed colour to white in the IDE) the tests 
read in English sentences that a business analyst would have been able 
to write.

Admittedly if your in the business of writing frameworks where your 
customer is a developer this has less of a win. Its not really any 
different to some of the clever language/syntax hacks found in the 
Boost libraries.

I'll take any productivity gain I can get, especially if its near zero 
cost :-)

Kevin

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| Kevin Wheatley, Cinesite (Europe) Ltd | Nobody thinks this      |
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