Teaching C++ programming using automated unit testing and test‐driven development—Design and efficacy study

Abstract

AbstractThe best practices of agile software development have had a significant positive impact on the quality of software and time‐to‐delivery. As a result, many leading software companies employ some form of agile software development practices. Some of the most important best practices of agile software development, which have received significant attention in recent years, are automated unit testing (AUT) and test‐driven development (TDD). Both of these practices work in conjunction to provide numerous benefits. AUT leads to reduced time to test, discover bugs, fix bugs, and implement new features; wider and measurable test coverage; reproducibility, reusability, consistency, and reliability of tests; improved accuracy, regression testing, parallel testing, faster feedback cycle, reduced cost, and higher team morale. The benefits of TDD include flexible and adaptive program design, cleaner interfaces, higher code quality, maintainability, extensibility, reliability, detailed evolving specification, reduced time on bug fixes and feature implementation, reliable refactoring, and code changes, reduced cost, reduced development time, and increased programmer productivity. Unfortunately, students in introductory programming courses are generally not introduced to AUT and TDD. This leads to the development of bad programming habits and practices which become harder to change later on. By introducing the students earlier to these industry‐standard best practices, not only the motivation and interest of students in this area can be increased but also their academic success and job marketability can be enhanced. This paper presents the detailed design and efficacy study of an introductory C++ programming course designed using the principles of AUT and TDD. The paper presents the pedagogical techniques employed to build industry‐proven agile software development practices in the students. As part of the paper, all the course material including the source code for the labs and the automated unit tests are being made available to encourage people to incorporate these best practices into their curricula.