[Edu-sig] How to introduce test-driven development?

[Kent Johnson]

Hello,

I am going to be teaching introductory Python programming in an adult education program this fall. (Finally! I wanted to do this in the spring but it didn't work out.) I want to introduce the students to unittest and test-first programming but I am not sure when and how to do this.

- using unittest requires a bit of understanding of classes unless I want to wave my hands quite a bit
- beginning programs may not have much to test, especially if they are heavily oriented toward console I/O

I'm tempted to just wing it - wait for a student to bring a problem that lends itself to testing, then demonstrate unittest and TDD. But I am interested in other ideas :-)

Thanks,
Kent