More than XP. More than one day.

In the 80's and 90's developer testing was basically non-existent. Developers were supposed to focus on writing production code. Testing was for "those other folks". With the emergence of Agile and especially XP this changed. Frameworks like junit (and many other *unit derivatives) supported developer testing. Soon after that, other frameworks came up that allowed developers to write more testable code (e.g. mocking frameworks). All these tools were integrated in IDE's to make it even easier to write tests.

Yet, today there are still too many developers who don't write tests. Or who don't write code that is testable. Writing testable and maintainable code that make it easy to write unit tests still seems to be an art: some developers get it - and are great! Others don't get it at all or try it but fail. Writing testable code is still an art.By adding some science to the art, we should be able to guide all developers towards more testable code and developer testing.

At Google, we recently started an initiative to do exactly that. We are collecting an amazing wealth of testing and code related data. The first goal is to find out which code attributes point to good or bad tests. We will then integrate these into our developer tools to give early feedback and ultimately develop tools and maybe a methodology to make good developer testing accessible to everyone.

Mark Striebeck is an engineering manager at Google where he is responsible for developer testing infrastructure, tools and adoption. In his 20% time he works in an internal user group which tries to further the adoption of agile practices. He has been working for more than 10 years in the software industry in a variety of engineering and management positions. Since discovering XP and agile development methodologies 5 years ago, he has become actively engaged in the agile community. He constantly tries to put new ideas and agile approaches to work. The great variety of projects and individuals at Google give plenty of opportunity for this. Striebeck is a frequent speaker at Agile and other conferences. He holds two master's degrees in mathematics and computer science from the University of Hannover and Brunel University, London.

Charles Babbage (1791-1871) is widely recognised as the great ancestral figure in the history of computing. The designs for his vast mechanical calculating engines rank among the startling achievements of the nineteenth century. Yet Babbage failed to build a complete engine despite massive government funding, decades of design and development, and the social advantages of a wealthy gentleman of science. The sorry saga of his heroic efforts is a tale told and retold as a parable with lessons for modern times: he operated at the limits of the technology, there were runaway costs, a bust-up with his chief engineer, a catastrophic confrontation with the Prime Minister, a beautiful countess (Ada Lovelace), and a personal vendetta with the scientific advisors to government. Babbage died bitter and unacknowledged with his vision for automatic general-purpose computers largely unrealised.

This talk will briefly recount efforts in the nineteenth century by Babbage and others to construct automatic computing engines. It will also recount the successful construction of a working calculating engine to original designs – the first complete Babbage engine – Difference Engine No. 2. In a project led by the speaker, this engine, designed between 1847 and 1849, was built over a period of 18 years and was completed in 2002 at the Science Museum. It consists of 8,000 parts, weighs 5 tonnes and measures 11 feet long and 7 feet high – a sumptuous engineering spectacle that no Victorian ever saw.

Controversially the talk will also outline the results of new research that force a radical revision of our received perceptions of Babbage. These include the fatal consequences of ‘dumbing down’ for purposes of public consumption the original ambitions for the engines; misconceptions about the motivation for computing machines, and the puzzle of Babbage’s silence in the face of concerted attacks on the utility of his machines. And this from one whose capacity for incontinently savage assaults on individuals, government and the scientific establishment seemed to know no constraint.

Doron D. Swade (MBE, PhD, MSc, C.Eng, FBCS, CITP) is an engineer, historian, a museum professional, and a leading authority on the life and work of computer pioneer Charles Babbage. He was formerly Assistant Director & Head of Collections at the Science Museum, London, and Senior Curator of Computing. Swade studied physics, electronics engineering, philosophy of science, machine intelligence, and history, at various universities including Cambridge University and University College London. He was a hardware designer for over a decade and consulted for the computer industry in the UK and US. Swade masterminded the construction of the first Babbage calculating engine built to original 19th-century designs. He is currently Visiting Professor (History of Computing) at Portsmouth University, and Research Fellow (Hon) (Computer Science) at Royal Holloway University of London. He lectures widely and has authored three books (one co-authored) and some eighty scholarly and popular articles on the history of computing, curatorship, and museology. His most recent book is The Cogwheel Brain: Charles Babbage and the Quest to build the First Computer (Little Brown, 2000, Penguin 2002). He was awarded an MBE in 2009 for Services to the History of Computing.

Terry Saunders is often told he's a storyteller by people that write about him. This is mainly due to the fact he tells stories for a living. Fast becoming an Edinburgh Fringe stalwart, 2008 saw him do his fourth story show, Figure 8, following on from the previous year's hit Missed Connections – a story show about a girl obsessed with the adverts people write to try and track down the strangers they've seen. 2006 was his first proper story show, Pulp Boy, about a teenage boy who spoke only in the lyrics of Jarvis Cocker. “amazingly accomplished comic storyteller … sublime” TimeOut

Photo by Jon Appleyard