Program with GUTs in C
One of the greatest shifts in modern programming practices has been how programmers across many different domains and languages have embraced unit testing. For the C programmer, however, a lot of what has been said and done in the unit testing space, from test-driven development to unit-testing frameworks, has passed them by. Most of the blogs and talks and advice out there is targeted at languages that are some combination of dynamic, managed or object-oriented — which by no stretch of the imagination describes C.
This day long session looks at the good unit tests (GUTs) and test-driven development (TDD) from the perspective of C. Rather than trying to fake object orientation, what are the composition-oriented styles and tricks that C can support more comfortably? What are the best ways to express and isolate external dependencies for testing? What does it take in code and in mindset to allow unit testing to embrace C?
Kevlin is an independent consultant, trainer, speaker and writer. His development interests and work with companies covers programming, practice and people. He is a contributor to the Modern Software Engineering YouTube channel. Kevlin is also co-author of two volumes in the Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture series, editor of 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know, co-editor of 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know and former columnist for a number of magazines and sites.