Comments on: Test-Driven Development is not an elite technique.

By: steve.freeman

steve.freeman — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:26:23 +0000

@Mat Agreed. The most important thing is to get started. It does take time and effort to learn TDD, just as any for any skill. And, as @chris points out, it’s even harder to unlearn old habits.

By: Mat Roberts

Mat Roberts — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:24:51 +0000

Well, recently I’ve been trying to test some of my jQuery code, and get the tests integrated with the build.

Now, while I’m sure it’s technically possible, and some guys out there will say “that’s easy you just blah blah blah…..” The reality of it, is it’s taken a lot of perseverance, and I still haven’t adequately solved the problem.

My experience is you have to make a real effort to get started with TDD - getting going is not for the weak willed. Once you’ve got started and you have a few tests in place it’s much easier.

By: Chris Tarttelin

Chris Tarttelin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:04:50 +0000

I’ve worked with a varied range of developers, from the elite to the fresh graduate. Trying to get a talented programmer who has never experienced TDD to write tests first is much harder than teaching a new programmer how to write tests. Bad habits are hard to break, but when you have no habits, it’s much easier to learn how to do things ‘properly’.

I support your statement that people who don’t TDD shouldn’t write code. You may write perfect code and make it clean, well factored and all other great habits, but after 2 years in production and 10s of changes, that code will be totally unrecognisable. If it isn’t TDD, it isn’t maintainable.

By: toni

toni — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:13:41 +0000

I actually think IT is for an elite of people and there are way too many mediocre developers around the world…

You need commitment, will to learn and improve, sometimes looking at some IT departments I think what if all these people were working in an hospital or in any mission critical field?

The fact that they’re not able to do TDD doesn’t surprise me, it’s a consequence not a root cause.

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:30:44 +0000

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By: steve.freeman

steve.freeman — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:56:25 +0000

@Martin So, you’re saying that TDD is only for the weak?

By: Martin Cron

Martin Cron — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:20:07 +0000

If I were really elite, strong, and experienced, I wouldn’t need tests, because I would be able to hold all of this stuff in my brain at once, write everything perfectly the first time, and never make changes that would break stuff that was previously working.

I just finished a pretty big refactoring project (pure refactoring, the external interfaces and behavior are the same but the underlying implementation was different) of an existing working system. Every time I got an edge case behavior wrong, introduced a bad side-effect, or removed a necessary side-effect (yuck) the tests went from green to red. This saved me at least a day of development and testing time, and reduced the chances that I would introduce any bugs to the product.