PHPNW11

Are Your Tests Really Helping?

Developer testing can reduce debug time, serve as executable documentation, build confidence, expose questionable patterns running rampant in your code, and in general, increase the speed of development and deployment. Tests can also cost you time, sanity, and agility. Laura’s session will not be the same old re-hash of the Misko Hevry talk on testability.

Instead of a talk that is generic, syntactically translated from Java to PHP, and neglectful the major coding patterns prevalent in existing PHP 5 code bases, all of which results in the majority of the audience as un-sold, she will look at coding and testing patterns inspired by a real PHP project. We will also discuss how to identify patterns and make small adjustments where testing is and is not helping.

The end result will be a toolbox of habits we can use to improve testability and forward momentum in development.