Kent Beck (born 1961) is an American

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

and the creator of

extreme programming Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development,"Human Centred Technology Workshop 2006 ", 2006, ...

, a

software development methodology In software engineering, a software development process or software development life cycle (SDLC) is a process of planning and managing software development. It typically involves dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or s ...

that eschews rigid formal specification for a collaborative and iterative design process. Beck was one of the 17 original signatories of the Agile Manifesto,"Extreme Programming", ''Computerworld'' (online), 2005, webpage
Computerworld-appdev-92
. the founding document for

agile software development Agile software development is an umbrella term for approaches to software development, developing software that reflect the values and principles agreed upon by ''The Agile Alliance'', a group of 17 software practitioners, in 2001. As documented ...

. Extreme and Agile methods are closely associated with

Test-Driven Development Test-driven development (TDD) is a way of writing source code, code that involves writing an test automation, automated unit testing, unit-level test case that fails, then writing just enough code to make the test pass, then refactoring both the ...

(TDD), of which Beck is perhaps the leading proponent. Beck pioneered

software design pattern In software engineering, a software design pattern or design pattern is a general, reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in many contexts in software design. A design pattern is not a rigid structure to be transplanted directly into s ...

s, as well as the commercial application of

Smalltalk Smalltalk is a purely object oriented programming language (OOP) that was originally created in the 1970s for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, but later found use in business. It was created at Xerox PARC by Learni ...

. He wrote the SUnit

unit testing Unit testing, component or module testing, is a form of software testing by which isolated source code is tested to validate expected behavior. Unit testing describes tests that are run at the unit-level to contrast testing at the Integration ...

framework for Smalltalk, which spawned the xUnit series of frameworks, notably

JUnit JUnit is a test automation framework for the Java programming language. JUnit is often used for unit testing, and is one of the xUnit frameworks. JUnit is linked as a JAR at compile-time. The latest version of the framework, JUnit 5, resides ...

for Java, which Beck wrote with Erich Gamma. Beck popularized CRC cards with

Ward Cunningham Howard G. Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is an American computer programmer who developed the first wiki Excerpt from 2014 book '' The Innovators''. and was a co-author of the '' Manifesto for Agile Software Development''. Called a pioneer, and ...

, the inventor of the wiki. He lives in

San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

and previously worked at

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

. 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 university, public research university in Eugene, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1876, the university is organized into nine colleges and schools and offers 420 undergraduate and gra ...

between 1979 and 1987, receiving B.S. and

M.S. A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medicine ...

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 Ron Jeffries (born December 26, 1939) is one of the three founders of the Extreme Programming (XP) software development methodology In software engineering, a software development process or software development life cycle (SDLC) is a proc ...

. 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

. 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 Test-driven development (TDD) is a way of writing source code, code that involves writing an test automation, automated unit testing, unit-level test case that fails, then writing just enough code to make the test pass, then refactoring both the ...

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. () * 2023. ''Tidy First?: A Personal Exercise in Empirical Software Design''. O'Reilly. ()

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 oper ...

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

. SUnit framework, origin of xUnit frameworks.

References

External links

* KentBeck on the

WikiWikiWeb The WikiWikiWeb is the first wiki, or user-editable website. It was launched on 25 March 1995 by programmer Ward Cunningham and has been a read-only archive since 2015. The name ''WikiWikiWeb'' originally also applied to the wiki software that o ...

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