Saturday, November 13, 2010

Test Driven Development Embedded C with James Grenning *Canceled*

Recently I wrote:

It is rare that anyone of interest comes to the Pittsburgh/Cleveland region to speak, on any subject at all. They might make Philadelphia, but never Pittsburgh, sadly for those who live in this part of the world.

Nick Barendt has gotten James Grenning to give a three day class at The Lean Dog boat in Cleveland Ohio, November 30-Dec 1, 2010, on Test Driven Development for Embedded C.

$1495 After 11/11/10. $1195 Early Bird Price until 11/11/10. Register here.

I covered James upcoming new book Test Driven Development for Embedded C [Nov./2010] in my blog about Makefile tip #0 on automatic serial numbers to be embedded in C code.

Test Driven Development is a powerful technique for building embedded software. This hands-on course teaches the practice of Test Driven Development in the challenging environment of C. In this course you will learn how TDD helps overcome some of the challenges embedded developers face including: unpredictable schedules, poor quality, and the problems that follow. In addition, embedded software developers must conquer the realities of concurrent hardware/software development, scarce target hardware availability, long download times, high deployment costs, as well as the challenges of testing embedded C.

TDD leads to better designs, towards more object oriented approaches to C. In this call you will also learn some of the design principles that can help to guide engineers to better designs.

Most of you have existing legacy code. In this class you will learn valuable techniques for dealing with legacy code. You will see incremental approaches to getting control of the legacy code with tests making improvements to the design less risky.

Test-Driven Development, a key agile practice, helps software developers improve schedule predictability and product quality and can do the same for embedded developers. TDD is valuable even outside of agile development methods.

This course describes the problems addressed by TDD, as well as the additional challenges and benefits of applying it to embedded software. You will learn the test driven techniques as well as specific design approaches to make your C code to testable today, maintainable tomorrow, and ready for a long useful life.

This course will get you and your team well on the way to applying TDD for Embedded C in your development efforts.


Today I'm sorry to say that James's class has been canceled due to lack of interest. Not enough people signed up to make it worth his wile to come to Cleveland. Makes me wonder why so few are interested. No one wants to come to Cleveland, or Pittsburgh? Few are interested in improving their skill set? That is a sure way to be out of a job in this industry. There is little interest in Test Driven Development specifically? What do you think?

3 comments:

  1. Location might be it. If it was in SanJose, I'm sure there would have been more interest.

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  2. In the Pittsburgh/Cleveland region there is a lot of Embedded System development that takes place. Alas it is in mostly the industrial line of things, like Sewage Treatment plants, Coal Ming machinery controls, or one bright spot that does get some press on occasion, Medical Equipment.

    Ultimately what is more important you, that when you flush it goes away, or that you can play games on your Smart Phone? The latter gets all the press, the former only when it doesn't go away.

    While meaning no offense to Native Americans, there is an old parable that goes something like this:

    A Machine Gun Salesmen shows up at a raging battle trying to sell his wares to the Indian Chief heading the assault on the invading White Man.

    "Chief: I'm sorry, can't you see that I'm to busy shooting all of these Bows and Arrows right now, to take a look at your fancy new gun right now?"

    How often do we make the time to learn a new tool amongst the daily pressures of meeting ship dates?

    A prominent person in the Embedded System realm told me just yesterday that China *is* taking the time to adopt proper and newer development techniques, like Test Driven Development.

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  3. We'll give the class another try in Cleveland in 2011.

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