One of the biggest challenges of adopting Test Driven Development (TDD) surprisingly is not technical. Instead it is often the psychological challenges that cause TDD to be used poorly or not adopted at all. For developers, writing in a TDD style can be akin to signing their name with the wrong hand. While it is certainly possible to make the signature look the same, it takes more time and concentration because it just feels unnatural. Furthermore, the idea of writing test code in order to exercise production code is already strange enough for most developers. The situation can then seem downright bizarre when coupled with writing test code before the application code.
SaveShareSend
Tags: methodology, opinion
Comments
james.herdman.myopenid.com replied ago:
Two points of contention:
1. The article title implies that TDD is backwards. I'd argue that it's the same direction: forwards. This will be explained in the next point.
2. The author fails to include (or fails to mention inclusion of) the time incurred in project planning in the traditional form of development. IMHO, TDD is a form of planning that merely qualifies completion in concrete terms (i.e. tests pass).
Jeremy Weiskotten replied ago:
Spoiler: YES,
Voters For This Link (23)
Voters Against This Link (0)