Catch: A natural fit for automated testing in C, C++ and Objective-C

Wednesday 6th November 2013 , 6:30 pm.

Speaker: Philip Nash.

Venue: Room 4.31, University of Edinburgh Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB.

Refreshments and networking from 6:00 pm.

This event is free of charge and open to all. No registration required - just turn up.

Synopsis

When it comes to test frameworks why should the C family always be playing catch-up to Java, .Net and Ruby? Why should we make do with a choice of hand-me-down frameworks that force us to write our test code so differently from our production code - often in order to conform to an xUnit template that made sense in other languages?

Why should C & C++ test frameworks be second class citizens due to lack of features such as reflection or annotations? Objective-C frameworks do better, but still are limiting and awkward.

Why should testing be so often put off because of the hassle of installing and using a framework?

CATCH changes all that with an innovative, native C++, framework - with Objective-C bindings. Its author, Phil Nash, is here to explain how and why.

About the speaker

Phil has spent much of the last three decades trying to work out how to transform percussive actions on a keyboard into patterns of electrical pulses that seem to make some people happy. Along the way he has discovered that sometimes you need to get other people involved too and generally tries to hang out with those that care about the craft as much as he does. Outside of contract work, consulting, training and coaching he has authored open source projects such as Catch (a C++ & Objective-C test framework) and several iOS apps. If you're not careful he also speaks at conferences and events.