Abstract
Unit Testing Case Study: How Ohio Mutual Insurance Group Got Started
The splendor of unit testing that you’ve been seized by at the last software engineering conference or reading dreamily about in blogs and magazines is probably true….mostly. Unit testing is necessary and is a rigor that all Software Engineers should follow. The part that gets glazed over, left out or misrepresented is how hard it is to actually get started. That is, at least, the experience that I and my co-workers have had at Ohio Mutual Insurance Group. I suspect that if you’ve tried to start unit testing you were left as confused as we were. Just as we were, you were probably brimming with excitement but dumbfounded at the prospect of actually beginning. Starting a unit testing discipline is possible. The problems that keep you from starting are surmountable. In this talk I will provide a case study for how Ohio Mutual Insurance Group overcame the problems with writing our first unit tests by showing you some of our actual production code. I’ll explain the code that gave us fits and show you the testing methods we used to circumvent the problems.
Slides
Bio
Nick Watts is a lifelong student of Computer Science, music, and literature. He has been a Java developer at a small Insurance company in Ohio for five years. His programming expertise is currently web development on the Java Enterprise platform and SOAP/RESTful web services. Nick has worked as a programmer and research assistant at the Ohio Supercomputer Center and as an instructor within the Cisco Networking Academy. He has taught two non-credit classes at Columbus State Community College and has led training sessions throughout his career. Nick holds a B.A. in English from the Ohio State University and is meandering his way through a Master of Science degree in Computer Science at Franklin University. Most importantly, Nick is the proud husband of his beautiful wife Dana and father to his son Xander.
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