According to a recent scientific study, using TDD increases development (coding) time by 15-30%, but results in 40-90% fewer defects. This study was done with 4 different development teams, from IBM (1 team) and Microsoft (3 teams), whose development practices are nothing if not pragmatic. This actually confirms what any TDD practitioner will tell you: you spend a bit more time writing tests up front, but the quality of the resulting code is largely superior.

One of the awesome things about Hudson is the sheer number of plugins available. In fact, if you use Hudson, make a habit of checking out the list of available plugins every month or so - there's bound to be something new that you could use! In this article, I explore two relatively new ones: the Setenv plugin and the Description Setter plugin.

Another handy feature in JUnit 4.7 is the TemporaryFolder @Rule. Using this rule, JUnit will create a temporary folder before your test, and delete it afterwards, whether the test passes or fails. This comes in very handy for tests involving file manipulation of any sort.