Derik Whittaker

Thoughts on Software Development, .Net, OOP, Design Patterns and all things cool

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Tests make a great To-Do List

How many times as developers have we made list of things we needed to work on. Most of the time they are 'tasks' in some sort of task management system. However, we do not have one of these such systems at work. So I decided to use 'ignored' tests as my tasks.

I did this in 2 ways:

As I was creating the various objects and methods I started creating tests that had the only contained Assert.Ignore("SomeMessageHere"). In the body of the method added a description of what needed to be done.
I also created a list of other tasks that I needed to do (ie finish setting up CI, determining where to get various config information, etc). These tests were also simply Assert.Ignore.

I decided to do this because I figured that seeing these tests in my list over and over again would be a good way to remind me of what needed to be done.

I set these to be Ignores in place of Fail because I don't want these tests to cause my CI process to fail.

Anyway, for some reason it had never occurred to me that tests could double as a 'To-Do' list, but it works.

Till next time,

Published Mar 21 2008, 07:28 PM by Derik Whittaker

Filed under: TDD, Opinion

Comments

Matt Hinze said:

Tests make great to-do lists.. and they also help me re discover my context after I've been working alongside.. help me answer the question, "what was I doing?"

red, green, refactor, red *code code code*, red *code code code* .. where was I? .. red, ah yes, red green refactor..

# March 22, 2008 2:34 PM

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About Derik Whittaker

Derik is a .Net Developer/Architect specializing in WinForms working out the northern suburbs of Chicago. He is also believer and advocate for Agile development including SCRUM, TDD, CI, etc.

When Derik is not writing code he can be found spending time with his wife and young son, climbing on his bouldering wall, watching sports (mostly baseball), and generally vegging out.