Study Session: Test Driven Development: Write the Test First

Are you a software engineer who enjoys digging into new ideas, practices, and patterns that strengthen your craft? Join us for the next OKTech Study Session, a gathering for engineers who don’t just code, but want to understand the why and how behind solid software design.

Session Summary

This session is hands-on about Test Driven Development (TDD). After a short introduction, you’ll spend most of the evening writing code, working through small exercises (katas) using the red-green-refactor loop.

The problem: Writing tests after the code works can feel like a chore. The feature is done, so writing the tests become busywork. Therefore most people will only write the happy paths while the awkward edge cases quietly are getting skipped.

The approach: TDD inverts the order. Each case starts as a small failing test, so covering it is the next step rather than an afterthought. You also get fast feedback, smaller steps, and pressure toward simpler, more decoupled designs.

Goal: Able to use TDD as a way to make writing tests more valuable.

Please prepare: Bring a laptop with your IDE set up and a console project ready to go, in whatever language or technology you like, with a working testing framework. Please check that your setup runs before you arrive, so we can start writing tests straight away.

Session difficulty: Medium, you should already be able to writing code and tests in your chosen language. Prior TDD experience is not required.