A Fun Little Hack

Azuldo from Hacker News responded to my Let's Code: Test-Driven Javascript announcement with a neat suggestion:

I would love to see TDD happen with a test committed followed by a commit to pass the test, etc. to get a sense of the full process or write my own passing code for each test and compare against another implementation.

My first reaction was that the screencast itself already covers this level of detail. The screencast has two channels: a "Lessons Learned" channel, which is for concise, information-dense how-tos, and a "Live" channel, which is a live recording of developing a real world web application. The "Live" channel has the play-by-play Azuldo is asking for.

But then I thought, "Why not? I already have a wrapper that runs my build script—I can just modify that to automatically commit every time the build status changes."

And so I did. The result is Autocommit—a neat little hack that shows how a simple Node.js module developed with TDD evolved over time.

If you like this idea, you'll probably enjoy my TDD screencasts. Let's Play TDD is a massive series focusing on Java, TDD, and incremental design. Let's Code: Test-Driven Javascript is my new series focusing on professional web development. I'm launching it through Kickstarter so I can give it the time and attention it deserves; for more information or to back the project, check out the Kickstarter.

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