research-article

Test-driven design for introductory OO programming

Author:

Viera K. ProulxAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Volume 41, Issue 1

Pages 138 - 142

https://doi.org/10.1145/1539024.1508919

Published: 04 March 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Test-Driven Design (TDD) has been shown to increase the productivity of programming teams and improve the quality of the code they produce. However, most of the introductory curricula provide no introduction to test design, no support for defining the tests, and do not insist on a comprehensive test coverage that is the driving force of the TDD.

This paper presents a curriculum, pedagogy, and the software support for introductory object-oriented program design that uses the TDD consistently from the very beginning. The testing software does not increase the program complexity and is designed to work with the simplest programs. It has been used by hundreds of students at several colleges and is freely available on the web.

Our experiences show that besides improving the quality of code students produce, TDD combined with the novice-appropriate test libraries reinforces students' understanding of the object oriented program design.

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Cited By

Proulx V(2013)Test-first design pedagogy in introductory Java programmingJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/2460156.246017528:6(98-99)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2460156.2460175
Proulx VCamp TTymann PDougherty JNagel K(2013)Test-first design in introductory Java programming (abstract only)Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/2445196.2445525(765-765)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2445196.2445525
Proulx V(2012)Software testing (in Java) from the beginningJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/2184451.218445427:6(7-9)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2184451.2184454
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Test-driven design for introductory OO programming
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        Information science education
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features
        Classes and objects
      2. Language types
        Object oriented languages

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 41, Issue 1

SIGCSE '09

March 2009

553 pages

ISSN:0097-8418

DOI:10.1145/1539024

Issue’s Table of Contents

SIGCSE '09: Proceedings of the 40th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
March 2009
612 pages
ISBN:9781605581835
DOI:10.1145/1508865
General Chairs:
Sue Fitzgerald
Metropolitan State University
,
Mark Guzdial
Georgia Institute of Technology
,
Program Chairs:
Gary Lewandowski
Xavier University
,
Steven Wolfman
University of British Columbia

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 04 March 2009

Published in SIGCSE Volume 41, Issue 1

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Cited By

Proulx V(2013)Test-first design pedagogy in introductory Java programmingJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/2460156.246017528:6(98-99)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2460156.2460175
Proulx VCamp TTymann PDougherty JNagel K(2013)Test-first design in introductory Java programming (abstract only)Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/2445196.2445525(765-765)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2445196.2445525
Proulx V(2012)Software testing (in Java) from the beginningJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/2184451.218445427:6(7-9)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2184451.2184454
Proulx V(2011)SoundlibJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/1968521.196855326:6(149-155)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1968521.1968553
Proulx V(2011)Introductory computingProceedings of the 5th international conference on Informatics in Schools: situation, Evolution and Perspectives10.1007/978-3-642-24722-4_16(177-188)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-24722-4_16
Thompson EAyfer RImpagliazzo JLaxer C(2010)From phenomenography study to planning teachingProceedings of the fifteenth annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education10.1145/1822090.1822096(13-17)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1822090.1822096
Proulx V(2009)Test-driven design in Java for novice programmersJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/1529995.153001924:6(115-116)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1529995.1530019
Proulx VJossey W(2009)Unit testing in JavaACM SIGCSE Bulletin10.1145/1595496.156299041:3(349-349)Online publication date: 6-Jul-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1595496.1562990
Proulx VJossey WBrézillon PRussell ILabat J(2009)Unit testing in JavaProceedings of the 14th annual ACM SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education10.1145/1562877.1562990(349-349)Online publication date: 6-Jul-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1562877.1562990
Lojo NFox ABecker BQuille KLaakso MBarendsen ESimon (2022)Teaching Test-Writing As a Variably-Scaffolded Programming PatternProceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Vol. 110.1145/3502718.3524789(498-504)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3502718.3524789
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