Kent Beck (born 1961) is an American software engineer and the creator of extreme programming, a software development methodology that eschews rigid formal specification for a collaborative and iterative design process. Beck was one of the 17 original signatories of the

Agile Manifesto In software development, agile (sometimes written Agile) practices include requirements discovery and solutions improvement through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams with their customer(s)/ end user(s), ...

,"Extreme Programming", ''Computerworld'' (online), 2005, webpage
Computerworld-appdev-92
the founding document for

agile software development In software development, agile (sometimes written Agile) practices include requirements discovery and solutions improvement through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams with their customer(s)/ end user(s), ...

. Extreme and Agile methods are closely associated with Test-Driven Development (TDD), of which Beck is perhaps the leading proponent. Beck pioneered

software design pattern In software engineering, a software design pattern is a general, reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem within a given context in software design. It is not a finished design that can be transformed directly into source or machine ...

s, as well as the commercial application of

Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by Alan ...

. He wrote the

SUnit SUnit is a unit testing framework for the programming language Smalltalk. It is the original source of the xUnit design, originally written by one of the creators of Extreme Programming, Kent Beck Kent Beck (born 1961) is an American software en ...

unit testing framework for Smalltalk, which spawned the xUnit series of frameworks, notably JUnit for Java, which Beck wrote with Erich Gamma. Beck popularized CRC cards with Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the wiki. He lives in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

and worked at social media company

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

. In 2019, Beck joined Gusto as a software fellow and coach, where he coaches engineering teams as they build out payroll systems for small businesses.

History

Beck attended the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc Nike, Inc. ( or ) is a ...

between 1979 and 1987, receiving B.S. and

M.S. A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

degrees in computer and information science. In 1996 Beck was hired to work on the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System. Beck in turn brought in Ron Jeffries. In March 1996 the development team estimated the system would be ready to go into production around one year later. In 1997 the development team adopted a way of working which is now formalized as extreme programming. The one-year delivery target was nearly achieved, with actual delivery being only a couple of months late.

Publications

Books

* 1996. ''Kent Beck's Guide to Better Smalltalk : A Sorted Collection''. Cambridge University Press. () * 1997. ''Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns''. Prentice Hall. () * 2000. ''Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change''. Addison-Wesley. Winner of the Jolt Productivity Award. () * 2000. ''Planning Extreme Programming''. With Martin Fowler. Addison-Wesley. () * 2002. ''Test-Driven Development by Example''. Addison-Wesley. Winner of the Jolt Productivity Award. () *: Beck's concept of test-driven development centers on two basic rules: *:# Never write a single line of code unless you have a failing automated test. *:# Eliminate duplication. The book illustrates the use of unit testing as part of the methodology, including examples in Java and Python. One section includes using test-driven development to develop a unit testing framework. * 2003. ''Contributing to Eclipse: Principles, Patterns, and Plugins''. With Erich Gamma. Addison-Wesley. () * 2004. ''JUnit Pocket Guide''. O'Reilly. () * 2004. ''Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, 2nd Edition''. With Cynthia Andres. Addison-Wesley. Completely rewritten. () * 2008. ''Implementation Patterns''. Addison-Wesley. ()

Selected papers

* 1987.
Using Pattern Languages for Object-Oriented Programs
. With Ward Cunningham.

OOPSLA OOPSLA (Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages & Applications) is an annual ACM research conference. OOPSLA mainly takes place in the United States, while the sister conference of OOPSLA, ECOOP, is typically held in Europe. It is ope ...

'87. * 1989.
A Laboratory For Teaching Object-Oriented Thinking
. With Ward Cunningham. OOPSLA'89. * 1989.

.

framework, origin of xUnit frameworks.

References

External links

* KentBeck on the WikiWikiWeb
Sample chapter of Kent's book, IMPLEMENTATION PATTERNS

TalkWare Podcast interview with Kent Beck

FLOSS Weekly interview with Kent Beck

Kent Beck's Notes at Facebook

Kent Beck on unit testingBeing Human Podcast - A conversation with Kent BeckKent Beck website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beck, Kent Extreme programming American technology writers University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences alumni 1961 births Living people American software engineers Facebook employees Software testing people Tektronix people Engineers from Oregon Agile software development