With the behavior-driven development (BDD) methodology, development teams write high level, plain natural language tests to describe and exercise a system. Unfortunately, it is...

Committed to covering the latest tools, trends, and issues regarding software development approaches, plan-driven development methods, and process improvement programs, Agile Development & Better Software Conference West offers their 2013 interview series. 

This article discusses the dark underbelly of derivation: the fragile base class. It's possible to modify a base class in such a way that, even though you've improved its implementation and all your tests work just fine, you've nonetheless damaged the derived classes, perhaps fatally.

One of the features that makes Eclipse so popular within the Java community is the abundance of easy to use plug-ins. Many of these are freely available open-source tools. Plug-ins are available for virtually anything from implementing database connectivity to instant messaging. Because code quality is a critical aspect of production software applications, Eclipse has built-in tools that help developers write and deliver high quality code. Levent Gurses has employed a number of external plug-ins, including PMD, CheckStyle, JDepend, FindBugs, Cobertura, CPD, Metrics, and others to transform Eclipse into a powerhouse for writing, testing, and releasing high quality Java code. Levent shows you how to use Eclipse to improve your team's coding habits, enforce organizational standards, and zap bugs before they reach the client.

• The standard quality check tools available in Eclipse