I recently read an article on automated tests in developing a videogame by Phlip Plumlee. This is the kind of stuff I love. Stuff that gives me insight. It kind of reminded me of that one paper session at XP2004 where Geoff Bache presented a record/replay based solution for testing a GUI application.

Here. Hats off to Scott for coming out and saying all that. The sad part is that vendors like BEA and IBM and pushing new Java developers towards a similar visual editor type of tools and approach, which I obviously don't think is a good idea (except in the sense that they might be able to sell all sorts of hot air products to their unexpecting victims).

Mike Clark just started what will hopefully become an easy to follow series of blog entries for learning Ruby. Thanks to Mike, I finally got around to installing RDT and for the first time, see the green bar in Ruby (so far, I had only used the command line while reading the book) and boy did that give me an unrealistic sense of achievement :)

Mike, please keep going!

While looking for the Eclipse plug-in for Ruby at eclipse-plugins.info, I also checked the homepages of the PyDev and PHPEclipse plugins. I'd go as far as saying that if you're still using a fancy notepad for developing in some scripting language, you might benefit from a quick looksee to what an IDE platform such as Eclipse has to offer.

Dion also reacted to Mike's blog entry by discussing his own learning tools for getting up to speed with a new programming language, namely automated tests and an interactive shell. I think the list is missing something vastly important -- code completion. I want to get up to speed as quickly as possible and I just don't think that having to browse an API website somewhere is the quickest possible way... Now if only the Ruby plug-in would have a slightly better code completion, I'd be even happier.

Once again, there's a discussion going on about whose unit testing framework is bi... I mean, better. Cedric is asking are dependent test methods really evil to which Robert Watkins replied that they're at least mildly naughty.