CodingLaw!

Posted by Jeremy Miller on October 24, 2006

Because I watched too many "Man Law!" commercials during this weekend's football games:

 "There must be a stub or a test fixture in every codebase that uses the Simpsons as a theme for fake data"

 
CodingLaw!
 

P.S. A consistently effective way to break the ice during pairing sessions is to decide on the fake data theme of the day.  A couple years ago I was on a team with some client developers that weren't exactly warming up to us consultants (not the first or the last time).  As silly as this sounds, one of the coders got a bit friendlier after we used a NASCAR theme for a day in our unit tests.  With another coder we started using a Hair Metal band theme.  Star Wars/Star Trek are cliches now, just throwing ideas out at you that I've used:

  • Dukes of Hazzard
  • Zelazny's Amber series (for the two of us who knew what that was)
  • Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  • Wheel of Time

About Jeremy Miller

Jeremy is the Chief Software Architect at Dovetail Software, the coolest ISV in Austin. Jeremy began his IT career writing "Shadow IT" applications to automate his engineering documentation, then wandered into software development because it looked like more fun. Jeremy is the author of the open source StructureMap tool for Dependency Injection with .Net, StoryTeller for supercharged acceptance testing in .Net, and one of the principal developers behind FubuMVC. Jeremy's thoughts on all things software can be found at The Shade Tree Developer at http://codebetter.com/jeremymiller.
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  • http://blog.eriklane.com Erik Lane

    So, there are others out there who do this? I tend to use Seinfeld for mine. Giddy Up!

  • http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeremy.miller jmiller

    A fine choice.

  • http://devlicio.us/jim_bolla/ Jim Bolla

    That’s hilarious. Just last night I wrote a test for a my UserEditPresenter whose user data was Name: “Amanda Hugginkiss” and Division: “Moe’s Tavern”. It also was my first time using Rhino Mocks. Whew.

  • http://www.codebetter.com/blogs/eric.wise ewise

    The wheel of time test?

    Is that the test that starts out interesting, and then starts repeating data, but from different perspectives, without actually advancing the test? =)

  • bob

    Make that 3 for Amber…
    I’m going to have to sell jeweler’s rouge in the hunting section next time I do a store application!