Scott Densmore

Review: Test Driving iOS Development with Kiwi

I have long been a fan of Test Driven Development (TDD). I have used all kinds of frameworks for doing my tests and for all of them have adopted the Act, Arrange, Assert pattern. I have looked into doing Behaviour-Driven Development and like the idea, just never found a framework that I was comfortable with and could use back and forth with unit testing. 

I have been using OCUnit that ships with Xcode to do my testing. I decided that I wanted to branch out. I had heard good things about Kiwi for doing BDD with iOS.  I decided that I should try it out. I normally I stick to the web and spelunking, yet this time I decided to buy a book on the subject: Test Driving iOS Development with Kiwi. This book is only available from the iBooks store.  

I have to say the book was worth every penny. I really thought it was a simple and easy introduction. It doesn't try and cover every nook of the framework, but it gives you enough information to get you started and how you can easily use it. It also takes advantage of the fact it works on the iPad: you get media built right into the book. Rather than just text walk throughs, you get video / slides of how to do things visually. I really love this new way of doing books. 

If you have never done or looking to do testing for you application (shame on you if you don't), you should really look into this book and Kiwi. I give it 5 stars!

Enjoy!

Hilos and Unit Testing in C++

Jason Zander's blog post on Unit Testing mentioned our Hilo project doing unit testing for Metro Applications in C++.

My Favorite Features: Unit Testing Enhancements in Visual Studio 11 

If you are really interested in this, download the code and check it out. We have to do some tricks to test Asyc methods, but since everything is async these days, you will probably find it useful.

If you have any feedback, leave it on the site so we can put this into future releases.

Enjoy!

How To Disable Home Button or Kiosk Mode

Disable Home Button or Kiosk Mode

Good to keep this in mind the next time someone asks me.

Moore’s Law Falling Over

Silicon is eventually going to give up the ghost on how fast we can go.

Michio Kaku has a great explanation here.  Parallel Programming is one way to delay the process. I am really getting deep into this now with ppl and C++. It is my new favorite shiny toy!

When am I ever going to use this?

There was a question on stackoverflow on how to write an iOS app purely in C. Of course, anything is possible given time and money. The question is, why would I want to do this. Most of the time, you wouldn't, yet I don't think that is the lesson to learn here. It is not about mental gymnastics, it is understanding the system you live in.

When I was in school, most people in my math courses would always say "When am I ever going to use this?". I would say beyond most basic skills, I don't use much of the math that I learned (although it does come in handy helping the kids with their homework). When I do run into a problem that requires me to need something beyond the basics, I am glad that I at least know where to start looking. This is the same with programming. I don't write assembly, but sometimes in debugging, I don't have access to source and need to look at the output to see what is going on. I am glad that I took a course on debugging and got details on some of the x86 assembly calls. 

Most everything in programming is just another level of abstraction to make our lives easier (maybe). It is good to know how things work underneath the covers of your abstraction, although you don't have to be an expert. Go out and dig under the covers of your favorite platform and learn something new today. Maybe you can find a way to use it :).

Feeding My Need to Experiment

I was reading Alex Homer's blog this morning (shame on you if you are not reading it), and it got me thinking: Do I still like to experiment?

In his latest post, he talks about the need to experiment and what people are doing today. I agree with him and it got me thinking of what I do these days to experiment. Mostly it comes down to languages and devices which I have been doing this most of my life. Lately it has been Windows 8 using C++ and XAML.

I know many people have nightmares about C++, but with C++'11 and the new modern COM (WinRT), things are much better (and fun). We are working on a new project (Hilo) that is all about building a Metro app with C++. This is another chapter in the original Hilo project that was built for Windows 7.

I will be talking more about it as we get closer. We are getting ready to have a release on CodePlex.

Enjoy!

Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure Release

It always takes a while for your project to go live on MSDN but it is alive… ALIVE!  We really put a lot of effort into this one and is the last in the series. You should go check it out.

I have spent the past couple of years knee deep with Windows Azure and it has been awesome.  I can't believe what we were able to accomplish:

• Moving Applications to the Cloud, 2nd Edition
• Developing Applications for the Cloud, 2nd Edition
• Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure
• A Guide to Claims-Based Identity and Access Control (2nd Edition)

Working on our new project is completely new! Will let you know more later!

S is for Service

It is also for Single Responsibility Principle.

I have read a coupe of posts that I couldn't agree with more:

• MVCS
• You Are Not Ruthless Enough

Both of these articles talk about a topic I have been talking about for years.  Single Responsibility Principle. It is the first of the SOLID principles. I would go one step further and say if you are not doing TDD, you are still not ruthless enough. Do everything you can to make you and your code better. Some say "Stay Thirsty", I say "Stay Ruthless".

Chris Parker's post is better than I could ever write. Of course, anyone who quotes King Crimson is pure awesome in my book!