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I love this book, for a intermediate unit tester, this book not only furthered my knowledge of unit testing, but it also showed me alot about rhino mocks which is taking unit testing to the next level. This books also give you alot of insight on how to sway a development team towards the idea of incorporating unit testing into a reluctant group. Open your minds and let the unit test philosophy in brothers.

-Mark
Rating: 4 / 5

First off, I’ve been doing unit testing for a while now. Very basic testing, at that. My existing tests, before I read this book, were rather hack-and-slash, with no serious organization, naming, or coding standards. They really only covered the low-hanging fruit of the code under test, and didn’t cover any code that had dependencies. With the stage set, on to the book.

I won’t discuss every chapter of the book, as that has been done already. I will comment on specific ones of value to me.

Chapters 3 and 4 were very educational for me, as they covered stubs and mocks, a subject I was unfamiliar with previously. Now that I know what they are and when, where, and how to use them, I will be able to simplify my unit tests.

Chapter 7, about the pillars of unit tests, is worth the cost of the book. It emphasizes the importance of the trustworthiness, readability, and maintainability of your test code.

There are two appendices, one on designing code for testability, and one listing various tools and frameworks to assist the unit testing process. These are good to have at hand.

Now going back to where I started this review: after having read this book, I can see ways that my test code can be improved. I’ve already started naming my test cases in a standard manner, and organizing test classes so they parallel the code under test. I have started using dependency injection to enable testability, and my code coverage has risen as a result. I will be reviewing my tests for the qualities, or lack thereof, mentioned in the chapter about pillars of unit tests.

As an aside, I would like to recommend an additional book: Working Effectively with Legacy Code, by Michael Feathers. Not to take away from this one, but the legacy code book is a fine choice to pair with this one. They are very complementary; Art of Unit Testing is about getting your code under test, while Working Effectively with Legacy Code is about refactoring your code to make it testable. Roy actually mentions the legacy code book in passing, and recommends it.

If you are not already a guru on unit testing, and are looking to improve your knowledge on the subject, this book is for you. I recommend it.
Rating: 5 / 5

I have been a .NET developer for over 6 years now and honestly have not had a real need for unit testing until recently. My current job and dept are slowing forcing all their developers to write up unit-testing proceedures for all of the application they have developed and I thought getting this book would be a very good idea.

This book covers unit testing in .NET from a pragmatic, yet thourough and passionate, perspective. It covers organizational topics such as how you introduce unit testing in an organization and how to do code reviews of tests.

The book begins with an introduction to NUnit, and a set of definitions. It then moves quickly enough to a bit of practice with a first unit test.

The next section develops the concept of mock and stubs, and discusses in depth the Rhino Mocks framework. This part furthermore presents a set of good practices related to the use of this Framework, or any other isolation framework.

After discussing the building blocks of unit tests, the third part presents a set of good practice for the tests themselves, to avoid (among other issues) that the maintenance cost of the tests exceeds the advantage gained by their existence.

The last part of the book is looking at a level above, and presents the different points to keep in mind when introducing unit tests in an organization and especially in an existing project, which can represent a large proportion of cases when introducing unit testing in a team or project.

If you are new to unit testing like me, this book will demystify the practices, tools and techniques that would otherwise take years and lots of frustration to get right.

A great buy and must read for any UNIT testers!
Rating: 5 / 5