Kent Beck (born 1961) is an American

software engineer Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...

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, P ...

, a

software development methodology In software engineering, a software development process is a process of dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or sequential steps or sub-processes to improve design, product management. It is also known as a software devel ...

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), a ...

,"Extreme Programming", ''Computerworld'' (online), 2005, webpage
Computerworld-appdev-92
the founding document for agile software development. Extreme and Agile methods are closely associated with

Test-Driven Development Test-driven development (TDD) is a software development process relying on software requirements being converted to test cases before software is fully developed, and tracking all software development by repeatedly testing the software against al ...

(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 co ...

s, as well as the commercial application of Smalltalk. He wrote the SUnit

unit testing In computer programming, unit testing is a software testing method by which individual units of source code—sets of one or more computer program modules together with associated control data, usage procedures, and operating procedures&md ...

framework for Smalltalk, which spawned the

xUnit xUnit is the collective name for several unit testing frameworks that derive their structure and functionality from Smalltalk's SUnit. ''SUnit'', designed by Kent Beck in 1998, was written in a highly structured object-oriented style, which lent ...

series of frameworks, notably

JUnit JUnit is a unit testing framework for the Java programming language. JUnit has been important in the development of test-driven development, and is one of a family of unit testing frameworks which is collectively known as xUnit that originated ...

for Java, which Beck wrote with

Erich Gamma Erich Gamma is a Swiss computer scientist and one of the four co-authors (referred to as "Gang of Four") of the software engineering textbook, '' Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software''. Gamma is an expert in the Eclipse ...

. 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 17th ...

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, Dustin Mosk ...

. 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, and its co-founder, billion ...

between 1979 and 1987, receiving

B.S. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

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 The Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System (commonly referred to as "C3") was a project in the Chrysler Corporation to replace several payroll applications with a single system. The new system was built using Smalltalk and GemStone. The softwar ...

. 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 circa 1996, along with Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham. He was from 1996, an XP coach on the Chrysler Comprehensi ...

. 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 software development process relying on software requirements being converted to test cases before software is fully developed, and tracking all software development by repeatedly testing the software against al ...

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

. 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 opera ...

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

. SUnit framework, origin of

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 to accompany the Portland Pattern Repository website discussing software design patterns. The name ''WikiWikiWeb'' ori ...

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