Why you should use TCR tests in web development
Discover TCR tests, which bring technical excellence to web development through green code!
In agile development, web product’s quality level is the critical factor that allows a team to deliver stable and robust applications that satisfy customers and retain them over time.
Kent Beck, creator of the concept of TDD (Test Driven Development), now offers the TCR test approach. A quick reminder: Kent Beck is the American computer scientist who invented the concept of eXtreme Programming (XP). He is one of a key group of individuals that have contributed to the democratization of test-driven IT development.
With the new concept of TCR, Kent Beck offers a way to further strengthen the level of quality in web and software development.
Definition of TCR tests – a radical approach
TCR stands for test && commit || revert.
This is what the TCR approach looks like when used by a team of developers:
- The developer produces their code
- The code then passes through a type of “airlock” where it is tested
- The test result is either positive = green, or negative = red. In other words, either the code responds to what was requested in the ticket, or it doesn’t.
- If the test result is green then the developer will commit their code, which is sent to all the other developers who commit on the project.
- If the test result is red, then the developer reverts to the previous version. It means going back to the last step that had been tested and approved, redoing the work, and recoding what is necessary.
The approach is very simple, but radical. Either it passes, or the code is built from scratch again.
The philosophy of TCR is that you should always start from – and with – something that works. So, developers working with TCR always start from a point that has been implemented, that is to say, from a commitment that passed, and which worked.
If the test hasn’t passed, it’s because it didn’t work, so development is not continued in that direction. Developers thus go back to the last place it worked.
Why is the radicalism of TCR advantageous for web and mobile developments?
When a test does not pass (result = red), then the developer is put in a position where they have to redo the work until their code passes the test, and the result is green.
This method of reworking the code has certain benefits for developers:
- It avoids recoding something that does not work.
- The developer can take a new angle of attack, that’s perhaps more efficient for coding the functionality.
- No feature that does not work, or works badly, will pollute all the other pieces of code that have been committed by other team members. Everything that is committed is “pure”.
- It ensures developer teams always start from a reliable foundation.
This falls in line with the philosophy of incremental development, which involves each brick being arranged one after the other to constitute the final product.
The TCR approach strongly encourages developers to keep code as simple as possible, so that the code being tested passes as often as possible.
When you adopt the TCR approach in software development, you can thus ensure that you’re going to end up with high quality software.
These tests significantly improve:
- The technical quality of the software,
- •The quality of the functionalities offered to end users.
We recommend the implementation of TCR on web applications, mobile or software tools that require very high quality.
The implementation of TCR tests is done with the support of an IT expert. At Bocasay we offer the integration of TCR tests into your web project; indeed, it is essential that your teams understand the philosophy and especially the benefits of working with this approach.
