Interaction Tests, Mocks & Refactoring in Embedded Software

Welcome (Back) to Dr. Surly’s School for Mad Scientists!

Unit Testing and Test Driven Development help smart, capable developers like you create robust, reliable, and maintainable software that lets you sleep soundly at night. In this course you will apply these concepts to embedded code and system software in C.

This material builds on the foundation of our first course, Unit Testing & Other Embedded Software Catalysts. If you’ve taken our first course or you’re already familiar with TDD and xUnit frameworks, this course is a great next step.

Dr. Surly’s School for Mad Scientists

When you’re trying to take over the world you learn two things quite quickly. First, you end up building lots of technology like death rays and such that requires high quality firmware. Second, minions, climate-altering satellites, and lairs are expensive. While Dr. Surly’s lab has become quite proficient at software design and testing, supplemental revenue to fund all manner of villainy is a necessary evil. It’s all part of the standard world domination business model, and you get to benefit.

In This Course You Will:

• Learn interaction-based testing with stubbing and mocking in a real-world project.

• Use new tools! CMock & Ceedling complement the C testing tool Unity.

• Iteratively refactor already working code with the support of your test suite.

• See techniques and patterns for unit testing tricky code.

• Try strategies for prioritizing and planning an embedded project.

• Encounter big idea philosophies for process, design, and testing.

• Connect with a supportive community.

Learn by Doing—Build a Real-World Project from Start to Finish

The end result of this course is an actual, functional application that can run on real hardware. No simplistic exercises or toy examples. The hardware isn’t necessary for this course, but if you do have the hardware, it will serve as final proof that your code works. And, the final deliverable might just be handy for other projects too.

The project is the mechanism for learning in this course. We’ll grow the project from requirements using a structured, iterative process much as you would in a real project. We teach development, testing, design, and process skills as we build this project, showing where they are applicable in real life.

You will learn key concepts first from us demonstrating the skills by example, then through guided use, and finally as homework assignments that allow you to practice the skill on your own as you implement your project.

This Course Includes:

• 0x01 (1) Large project from requirements to finished product

• 0x19 (25) Code-centered lectures

• 0x0D (13) Code-exercises contributing to the main project

• 0x1F (31) Helpful resource-packed supplemental primers, guides, and how-to’s

• 0x195 (405) Minutes of thorough video lectures

• Links, quizzes, helpful hints, and more

Have questions? Please write us at… tdd@throwtheswitch.org

Join us in our mission to take over the world (with quality embedded software)!