DR. SURLY’S SCHOOL FOR MAD SCIENTISTS

Dr. Surly’s School for Mad Scientists is a curriculum to promote good embedded software practices and techniques. The series uses real-world examples, free open source tools, and humor to guide you through unit testing, interaction testing, and many other embedded software topics. So you too can take over the world.

COURSE 1: Unit Testing & Other Embedded Software Catalysts

This course is a great place to start if you are new to unit testing or new to embedded software.

In this course we teach:

Developing Embedded Software in C.
State-based Unit Testing.
Test Driven Development.
Sharpening your Coding skills and your Architecture skills with test-first design.
Using Free Tools like Unity.

Visit the course for a free preview of the lectures.

Price: $75. Actually… use the discount code SURLY-NOV24 and get in for 25% off ($55)

COURSE 2: Interaction Tests, Mocks, & Refactoring in Embedded Software

This course builds on Course 1. If you are already familiar with the basics of unit testing and embedded software, Course 2 may be the best place to start.

In this course we teach:

Developing An Actual Embedded Software Project From Scratch in C.
(In fact, this entire course is one large real-world project)
Interaction-Based Testing.
Mocks and Stubs and how they accelerate Testing.
Using Free Tools like CMock and Ceedling (the build environment is also freely available).
Testing Those Hard-To-Reach Places.

Visit the course for a free preview of the lectures. It’s over 4x the material of the first course!

Price: $150. Actually… use the discount code SURLY-NOV24 and get in for over 25% off ($110)

YOU ARE SMART & Capable

You are a developer of embedded and systems software. That’s especially challenging work.

You may or may not have heard of Test Driven Development (TDD).

But you do care about quality code. You care about meeting deadlines. You care about improving your skills and becoming even better at what you do.

WE CAN HELP YOU GET EVEN BETTER

We are Mark VanderVoord and Mike Karlesky.

We’ve been on a quest to improve embedded software for a long time. We’ve spent years working with TDD. We’re creators and contributors to open source testing tools. We’ve taught others at conferences, through blogs and books, and through onsite training and coaching.

Now we’re sharing what we know through our online courses.

THIS SERIES is the Real Deal

You will code on your first day and develop real-world projects as you progress. No toy examples!

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IT’s ALIVE!

We’ve released two courses with over one hundred lectures that include high-quality projects plus a whole bunch of supplemental guides addressing issues outside the main lectures.

In the first course, we introduce you to Unity, an open source testing framework for C. We show you how to test embedded and system software despite their unique challenges. And we organize everything around working with actual test code as quickly as possible.

In the second course, we get you started with a large-scale, end-to-end full project using all the techniques of good state-based testing from Course 1 and build upon these, training you in interaction-based unit testing with mocking. In the end, you will have built a well-tested, useful, real-world application (on real hardware if you choose to purchase it).