This Pragmatic Studio,will be taught by Jim Weirich and Joe O'Brien (right). Rails  was created in 2003 by David Heinemeier Hansson.  Rails developers often struggle with how to go about testing their Ruby on Rails applications. They may have heard about test-driven development (TDD), and may have even tried TTD themselves hoping to get immediate results.

After all, the pitch is that by practicing TDD you'll end up writing better code. The reality is that testing can be like exercise: It's something we all know we should do, but getting started and making it stick can be challenging.

Developers become overwhelmed by the choice of testing tools and give up straight away. Others press on but wrestle with how to continue doing TDD for all but the simplest problems or when software deadlines loom. Result, software quality suffers.  New features take longer to deliver. Debugging time escalates. And schedules slip due to excessive rework.

The Test-Driven Development Studio is a three day, hands-on training course designed to help Rails developers change the way they develop (and test) software. In this course, they'll learn test-driven development by actually doing it through a series of exercises guided by two experienced mentors: Jim Weirich and Joe O’Brien.

Attendees will be introduced to some new tools, but the tools only get you so far. The long-term value is in learning the fundamental practices and techniques of TDD. With this foundation, attendees will be able to choose the tools that work best for them. They'll come away from this course equipped with the skills to apply test-driven development to their current project, and use it throughout their career.

Joe O’Brien of EdgeCase comments:  "We have been wanting to offer more advanced training in the UK for some time now and our partnership with Pragmatic Studios allows us to do just that. This studio demonstrates one of Ruby’s greatest strengths - the ability to test everything. It also demonstrates a key part of the Ruby culture.

"Jim and I have spent time building a hands-on course that helps developers understand the concepts and apply them immediately.  It has worked really well with developers in the US and we feel it’s a perfect fit for Europe"