Jon Larkowski: Are We Testing The Right Things?

We all believe in testing. But, are we testing the right things in the right places with the right techniques? Testing is about risk management, return-on-investment, and opportunity cost vs. new features. The world of testing shifts fast. We’ll cover what we’ve been doing lately on various topics: why TDD vs. BDD, when to unit test, when to use model/ view/ controllers tests vs. integration tests, Cucumber vs. Rails integration tests, and the powerful-but-underrated “clicking on stuff” technique.

Register to hear Lark talk and win him some points!

About Jon a.k.a. “L4rk”

Blog: http://blog.l4rk.com/

Loving life as a Rails developer on Florida’s sunny beaches, Lark has co-founded RubyJax Jacksonville Ruby & Rails user group, with Steven Bristol of Less Everything. He is currently an employee number one or two as a Developer at Hashrocket, depending on how you count. He holds an Electrical Engineering/Computer Science degree from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lark hails from scenic Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, home of speedy Cray Supercomputers and refreshing Leinenkugel’s beer. Lately, he’s into the easier kinds of yoga, the heavier brands of Scandinavian progressive metal, and tenaciously fighting his way up to the local ping pong ladder.

He has 7  years experience in Microsoft-platform web development. Full-spectrum skills from architecture to database to middle-tier to operations to user interface to graphic design. He Succeeded in many large, full life-cycle projects, using Microsoft Solutions Framework (waterfall method), as well as agile methodologies. Also, he is  a Developer/architect for three years for WriteSendTrack.

Lark’s Specialties:

  • Cucumber, Forest, Rails, RSpec ,Trees
  • Web Skills: 7 yr – HTML, JavaScript, ASP / VBScript,
  • CSS middle-tier Skills: 3 yr – C# / ASP.NET 6 yr – XML / XSLT, VB 6 / COM+, SQL, IIS admin,
  • SQL Server Newer Skills: 1 yr – Python, Ruby on Rails
  • Nun chuck Skills: UNIX shell, Photoshop, Dreamweaver