I will be speaking at the Vermont .NET Users Group in Burlington, Vermont on Monday, April 11. My topic will be Unit Testing, Test Driven Development, and NUnit. I am really looking forward to again seeing Julie Lerman (who does a fantastic job of leading the group), Dave Burke, and meeting Roman Rehak (Roman has graciously offered for me to stay at his house). I am also looking forward to seeing the great group of people I met the last time I was at the Vermont group.
According to Julie, they will be handing out Dr. Neil Roodyn's book eXtreme .NET as one of the swag gifts. I hadn't read this book before, so over the last couple of days I have been reading it. So far, I would place it as a good introductory book to eXtreme Programming techniques using .NET. In terms of what to read first, second, and third, I recommend Kent Beck's book on Extreme Programming Explained and his book Test Driven Development: By Example, and then Dr. Neil's book For a more in-depth treatment, look at Jim Newkirk's excellent Test-Driven Development in Microsoft .NET.
In Dr. Neil's book, one term that I wasn't familiar with (at least the name) is "spiking". Spiking, according to Dr. Neil, is using rapid experimentation to validate your expectations about behavior, in this case, within the .NET Framework. I do that a lot when I am not sure about something and need to create some quick tests to validate or counter my assumptions. Its a powerful technique and time should be allowed for it when necessary.
