Essential Test-Driven Development with AI/LLM Assist: A Hands-On Workshop

Will AI take over developer and tester roles? Rob's investigations found that an AI/LLM bot can write effective implementations but will need very clear, descriptive specifications. Yes, we humans will need to write the tests first! Test-Driven Development (TDD) has allowed developers to do just that—to "think in tests"—for over 25 years. TDD combines engineering specification, developer testing, coding, and design in a fast feedback cycle that greatly reduces defects, debugging, and rework. Test-driven teams write a failing automated test that defines new behavior, then the "implementation" needed to pass that test. Finally, the team "refactors" to reshape the implementation into a maintainable design. Rob Myers demonstrates the essential TDD techniques, including "Fake It," "Triangulate," and "Obvious Implementation." He then demonstrates the similarities and peculiarities when doing TDD paired with a simple AI/LLM bot. Rob also provides his simple recipe for "building" your own AI bot. During this hands-on session, you’ll use simple specifications to focus on practicing TDD techniques, and you can optionally build and pair with your own simple AI bot from Rob's template. You will also have ample time to ask Rob any questions during your relaxed TDD exploration.

*Laptop Required. Delegates should have strong programming skills and be familiar with an object-oriented language and programming techniques. Delegates should bring a laptop installed with their favorite programming language (recommended: C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, or Ruby), IDE, and unit-testing framework. Also (optional) configured with their own LLM API account, such as OpenAI. If you prefer to configure the LLM bot in the class, Rob will walk you through the fairly straightforward steps. You’ll need your credit card with you: OpenAI apparently charges only $0.01 USD per transaction—Rob has used less than a dollar during his experiments—but OpenAI also has a minimum $5.00 USD up-front purchase.