This article also appears in video form on the Modern Software Engineering Channel. Agentic AI-supported software development is probably the biggest shift in our field since high-level languages appeared in the 1950’s and 60’s. As a software developer you can’t...
Here’s a question for you. What is the difference between a Spy and a Partial Mock? How about a Strict Mock? Test Double? Stub? What if I code it by hand instead of using a framework. Does that make it a Fake? Actually, I don't think so! The language around mocks is...
Kent Beck is one of the original authors of JUnit, an open source tool that kick-started a huge shift in programmer behaviour that I and others have found immensely valuable. In 2019 he published his "Test Desiderata" with advice about the properties he values in...
By Emily Bache There’s a frank discussion going on in the software industry at the moment about the words we use and the history behind them. Perhaps now is a good time to reconsider some of our terminology. For example, I’ve noticed we have several terms that...
In BDD you discover what software you should build through a collaborative process involving both software developers and business people. BDD also involves a lot of test automation and tools like Cucumber and SpecFlow. But what would happen if you used an Approval testing tool instead? Would that still be BDD?
Clinical Trials and Software Process Note: this article first appeared here In the Accelerate book, researchers explain several metrics which they have shown will measure the performance of a DevOps organization, and crucially, drive performance of the organization as...
As a woman programmer, I have noticed there is something of a gender imbalance in my profession. It's an issue that's interested me for a while, not least because people often ask me about what we can do to improve the situation. For myself, I enjoy writing code and I...
I forget exactly when, but I think it was 2008 or 2009. Anyway, I was at a software conference, and I was chatting with a developer after one of the sessions about cool new technologies and stuff. I don't remember what hot new thing it was we talked about, all I...
Last week I created a little quiz and put a link to it on Twitter. I was interested to see whether the terminology around Test Doubles has standardized on Gerard Meszaro's definitions, from his book "xUnit Test Patterns", and I thought my twitter followers (I have...
A while back, Gojko Adzic published this article "Redefining Software Quality" and I think it's pretty insightful, pointing out that we often expend a lot of effort ensuring quality at lower levels of the pyramid, when we should perhaps be investing higher up. I...
Hi – I´m Emily!
I am a consultant with Bache Consulting and chair of the Samman Technical Coaching Society. As a technical coach I work with software development organizations who want to get better at technical practices like Test-Driven Development, Refactoring and Incremental Design. I also write books and publish videos. I live in Gothenburg, Sweden, although I am originally from the UK.
If you’re enjoying the insights shared here on the blog, you might enjoy my training too.
“Technical Agile Coaching with the Samman Method” offers a practical guide to improving how developers collaborate and write code. You’ll learn hands-on techniques for Test-Driven Development, Refactoring, and effective team coaching.
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