I get to corrupt the young again, this time with unit tests!

In 2003, I got to speak to the SIGDA chapter at the University of Utah about quality assurance. On March 18th, I'll be speaking (along with my co-worker Chris Stark) to the SGDA chapter at UTD about unit testing.

I know that unit testing is not the most glamourous of subjects, but it is one of the basics that never gets taught in schools.

For those who don't know, a unit test is a programmatic test against a specific piece of code used to ensure correct functionality. A simple example would be testing the constructor to a piece of code to ensure that member variables are set correctly and returning the proper values. A more specific example would be testing loads and saves. The test would create a document (model, game state, etc.), save it, reload it, and compare the initial document (model, game state, etc.)to ensure they are identical.

Unit tests are vital to programming, especially when refactoring, doing integration work, updates and patches, essentially any coding work beyond the trivial.

Anyway, it looks like the meeting may be open to the public, so we hope to see at least some of you there...at least, if you're going to be in the area.