Upgrading myself from 'opportunistic' to 'agile'
Reading the posts of Darrell, Brendan, et al, I was starting to catch the TDD bug. I read with great interest Sandy's post Software Socialism, which hit the mark. I am opportunistic. I am a scientist turned programmer. One CS class in my life--intro to OOP using c++ in '97. Then, Jim Newkirk's TDD webcast today (no on-demand link yet). I need to improve. I need to get better. And I'm excited to do so, realizing it will be a lot of work. Looking up the hill to climb, it's almost overwhelming. Where do I start?
This isn't going to be an overnight transformation. I don't have too much spare time right now, with one full time contract and two freelance projects going on, plus two site upgrades later this year. Full time contract includes learning Win2k3/IIS6 and SharePoint Portal Server.
So where to begin? Is it best to learn NUnit/NUnitASP (most of my work is web-based)? Start with NDoc immediately? FxCop? What's the best tool to start using? And incorporate others as I go on.
Books, too. Obviously Jim Newkirk's. Then what? Code Complete? Pragmatic Programmer?
This will be an interesting project--the conversion of one opportunistic to agile.