The Beantown .NET User Group is meeting this Thursday, 4/2/09.

The topic for this month’s meeting is Unit Testing.  More specifically, it’s “The Unit Testing Throwdown.”  We’ll be discussing a range of topics in unit testing with the hope of establishing a list of real-world best practices.

This will also be our first meeting at our new location – Microsoft’s Cambridge offices.  As always, our meeting is open to everyone so bring your friends and co-workers.

It is no longer required to RSVP for our meetings but if you know you’re coming, please RSVP by 3pm on 4/2 since it will help speed your way through the building security and give us an idea how much pizza to order.  Click here to RSVP.

Future meetings:

· May 7 – Joseph Hill, Mono
· June 4 – TBA

-Ben

Title: The Unit Testing Throwdown

When: 4/2/09, 6p – 8p

Where:

Microsoft NERD

1 Memorial Drive

Cambridge, MA

Abstract:

Oddly, there seems to be almost no consensus about unit testing.  Lots of developers think that unit testing is dumb.  Plenty are ambivalent.  Some love it.

Even among those devs who are already sold on unit testing, there’s no consensus.  Sure, we might agree about some of the helpful things to do like using the Repository pattern, interface-driven design, and mocking frameworks but ask 10 developers how they’d unit test something and you’ll get 30 different answers.

Well, enough with the armchair quarterbacking.  It’s on!  You don’t like how I write my tests?  I want to know why.  Come show me how you do it.  Don’t like unit tests at all?  Come tell us why.  Got some killer technique?

Got an opinion about how much logic you put in each test method?  Tonight’s the night to bring out The Awesome.

The plan is to show code samples, gather around the whiteboard, and by the end (hopefully) sort out some Real-Life Best Practices for unit testing.

BTW, if you have unit testing topics that you think we should put on the agenda, drop me a line.