Session 2: Test Driving Shameless Green

Date: August 16, 2025

Key Concepts

In this lesson, our main task was to watch Sandi Metz’s talk, study her code, and then answer six questions about it. Afterward, we turned to the book 99 Bottles to compare our answers with Sandi’s own.

The real challenge, however, wasn’t just about finding the “right” answer, it was about learning how to justify our decisions. Could we explain our reasoning clearly enough to convince other programmers that our solution (or Sandi’s) was the better one? Working in a team of three, we debated each approach and practiced the art of defending design choices.

1. What decisions must be made before you can write this first test?

I think what behavior should we test. Is it a number that adds another number? Is it a boolean? In this case is a concatenated string.

Also, what methods should be publicly available? What is the API look like? (Bearing in min that we should name methods after the concept they represent rather than how they currently behave.)

What parameters are we going to allow? And what method for?

Maybe, which test to write first: entire song, multiple verses, or single verse? (Think in simplicity)

Arrange, Act, Assert

We shouldn’t overthink these decisions initially

1. Is it better to interpolate ‘number’ or to add a conditional?