jUnit and What Makes a Successful Tool ("Packages", Part 2)
What characteristics make a tool or technology successful? This is the second of four episodes on Joan Fujimura’s idea of “packages” for spreading theory and technology together.
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Show Notes
Recombinant DNA ("gene splicing") was a wildly successful technology in the world of cell biology. Its success gave credibility to the associated "proto-oncogene theory of cancer." The theory piggy-backed on the tool.
jUnit was a fairly successful tool in the world of Java programmers. But it was not as successful as recombinant DNA, and it was fairly unsuccessful at promoting its associated theory of test-driven design.
This episode looks at what (according to Joan Fujimura's ideas about the history of molecular biology) is required for a tool to be successful, and why jUnit's theory didn't successfully piggyback on the tool.
Sources mentioned
Crafting Science: A Sociohistory of the Quest for the Genetics of Cancer, Joan Fujimura, 1997.
Molecular Cloning, a Laboratory Manual (Fourth Edition), Michael R. Green and Joseph Sambrook, 2012.
“Test Infected: Programmers Love Writing Tests”, Kent Beck and Eric Gamma.
"JUnit: A Cook's Tour", Kent Beck and Eric Gamma.
Junit Recipes: Practical Methods for Programmer Testing, J. B. Rainsberger, 2003.
XUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code, Gerard Meszaros, 2007.