Related link: http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/page2.html
Andy and Dave (the Pragmatic Programmers) are at it again with a brand new tome, Pragmatic Unit Testing with C#, a look at unit testing using NUnit.
It constantly amazes me how often I come across otherwise knowledgable, competent .NET programmers who haven’t even heard of unit testing let alone NUnit. I mean, here is a technology that took the panic out of programming for me, overnight. Here is a tool without which I can never know that my code is *really* working. And the Java community just gets it. JUnit is built into everything.
Not quite so over on the .NET side, much to my chagrin. I do my best to evangelize it when I can, but Andy and Dave can (and do) do a much better job. I hope this book sells a million copies.
Unit testing?
Up until a year ago, I was in exclusively a Java environment. We had wonderful well-known tools like Ant, jUnit, and OOP. Now I'm working in an almost exclusively asp environment that's beginning to switch to .Net and these seem like foreign concepts.
I agree whole-heartedly that most of the .Net "Community" hasn't heard of these tools. I believe it has to do with the lack of collaboration that goes on. In the Java world, if I do new development, I first poke around various Java forums and google and usually find something pretty close if not spot on. In the .Net/C# world, I do the same thing only to find dozens of closed-source libraries that *may* be useful, but you have to buy them just to try them out.
If C# is going to gain some serious momentum (outside of MS PR campaigns), more developers need to begin picking up these tools and realize the sheer power of automated Unit Testing and how it can make things simpler and safer for everyone involved.
Unit testing acceptance
Until NUnit is fully integrated into VS.NET, uptake is going to be slow. Most .NET folks only know what VS.NET gives them and it's quite foreign to go out into the community and find ancillary tools which are not provided by Microsoft. I do see a lot of Java people that have worked in the .NET world bring these tools to the table, but I guess that's to be expected. Use what you're familiar with.