A couple of weeks ago I ran a “TDD Against the Clock” session. The format is simple: working in pairs following a strict red-green-refactor TDD cycle we complete a simple kata. However we add one key constraint: the navigator starts a five minute timer. As soon as the five minutes is up:
- If the code compiles and the tests are green, commit!
- Otherwise, revert!
Either way, the pairs swap roles when the timer goes off. If the driver completes a red-green-refactor cycle faster than five minutes, they can commit ahead of time but the roles still swap.
The kata we chose for this session was the bowling kata. This is a nice, simple problem that I expected we could get a decent way through in each of the two 45 minute sessions.
Hard Time
The five minute time constraint sounds fiendish doesn’t it? How can you possibly get anything done in five minutes? Well, you can, if you tackle something small enough. This exercise is designed to force you to think in small increments of functionality.
It’s amazing how little you can type in five minutes. But if you think typing speed is the barrier, you’re not thinking hard enough about the right way to tackle the problem. There comes a point in the bowling kata where you go from dealing with single frames and simple scores to spares (or strikes) for the first time. This always requires a jump because what you had before won’t suit what you need now. How to tackle this jump incrementally is part of the challenge when working within a five minute deadline. One of our group had an idea but knew it was tough to get it done in five minutes. He typed like a demon trying to force his solution in: he still ran out of time. Typing speed is not the problem (no matter how much it seems like it is). You need a better approach, you need to think more not type more.
Good Behaviour
After a few cycles, we found hardly anybody hit the 5 minute deadline any more. It’s fascinating how quickly everyone realised that it was better to spend a 5 minute cycle discussing than to get lost half-way through a change and end up reverting. Similarly, when you find the change you wanted to make in this cycle is too hard or too time consuming, it’s better to throw away what you have, swap pairs and refactor before you try and write the failing test again.
These are all good behaviours that are useful in day-to-day life, where it’s all too easy to keep chasing down a rat hole. Learning to work in small, independent increments and making that a subconscious part of how you work will make you a better programmer.
Wrong School
The biggest trouble we found is that the bowling kata isn’t well suited to what I consider “normal”, outside-in TDD (London School TDD). Most of the time I use TDD as a design tool, to help me uncover the right roles and responsibilities. However, with the bowling kata the most elegant solution is the one Uncle Bob drives towards, which is just simple types with no object modelling.
This is fine for an algorithm like scoring a game of bowling, which has an ultimate truth and isn’t likely to change. But in the normal day-to-day world we’re designing for flexibility and constant change. This is where a good object model of the domain makes things easier to reason about and simpler to change. This is typically where outside-in TDD will help you.
A couple of the group were determined to implement an OO version of the bowling kata. It isn’t easy as it doesn’t lend itself naturally to being built incrementally towards a good object model. However, with enough stubbornness it can be done. This led to an interesting discussion of whether you can TDD algorithms and whether TDD is better suited to problems where an object model is the desired outcome.
Obviously you can TDD algorithms incrementally, whether it’s worthwhile I’m not so sure. Typically you’re implementing an algorithm because there is a set of rules to follow. Implementing each rule one at a time might help keep you focussed, but you always need to be aware of the algorithm as a whole.
Using TDD to drive an OO design is different. There can be many, similarly correct object models that vary only by subtle nuances. TDD can help guide your design and choose between the nuances. While you still need to think of the overall system design, TDD done outside-in is very deliberately trying to limit the things you need to worry about at any given stage: focus on one pair of interactions at a time. This is where TDD is strongest: providing a framework for completing a large task in small, manageable increments.
Even if the problem we chose wasn’t ideal, overall I found the TDD against the clock session a great way to practice the discipline of keeping your commits small, with constant refactoring, working incrementally towards a better design.
How do you move a mountain? Simply move it one teaspoonful at a time.
| Reference: | TDD Against the Clock from our JCG partner David Green at the Actively Lazy blog. |
