Code Platoon Week Two – Teamwork and test driven development

As Code Platoon students continue to develop fluency in both Javascript and Python, we’ll introduce an approach to testing that catches bugs before they make their way into production code. We’ll also explore a critical success factor in the journey of any software developer which is the ability to collaborate. Students learn how to access free-to-use, or ‘open source’ libraries of code written by other developers before diving into the first of several group projects.

Proactive versus reactive code testing

An often overlooked, but extremely valuable skill when writing code is testing that code. The larger and more complex a developer’s codebase, the more likely it is that things will go wrong or break down. To ensure a small bug doesn’t have a ripple effect that takes down a whole system, good software developers learn to test their code early and often.

Writing effective tests is a skill in its own right. At Code Platoon we teach students to practice Test Driven Development (TDD). TDD is a methodology that anticipates and reduces the likelihood of bugs by proactively coding tests around a desired function before designing and implementing that function.

The tests tell the software developer what the function should not do so that their initial attempt at writing the code which supports that function is clean and less prone to rework. It is a common practice throughout the tech world, but it cannot be taken for granted!

Seeing code through the eyes of others

Developers write lots of code, for sure, but they also spend an enormous amount of time working with code written by someone else.

Before diving into a new codebase from another coder, a developer must first understand how its components interact to achieve the desired result. The ability to do so requires a level of patience, knowledge of predefined constructs, and pattern recognition that does not factor into autonomous code writing.

Getting comfortable using third party libraries enables developers to build really cool stuff at a much faster pace! At Code Platoon, students learn how to search for, install, and use these libraries in both Javascript and Python. We spend time digging through documentation, and discuss the best practices for troubleshooting code that isn’t your own.

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