Are You Wasting Time With Test Driven Development?

http://blog.architexa.com/2010/08/wasting-time-with-test-driven-development/

by sethrq • 16 years ago

6 2 16 years ago

blog.architexa.com

For all these points, the real answer is "you're doing it wrong." TDD is supposed to, over the course of the project, allow faster development, allow easier and safer refactoring, and overall allow you to feel confident in the system you've built.

My personal experiences have shown the following:

* If you're not allowing yourself to write prototyping / exploratory code without tests, you're doing it wrong.

* If the first thought when writing tests for a method / class / etc is "What do I need to mock", you're doing it wrong (mock over-usage is the worst TDD mistake I've ever seen).

* If the tests take too long to run, you're definitely doing something wrong.

I've run the full gamut of extreme white-box testing to full black-box testing. There are merits to both, and there's a time and place for both, but anyone who adheres to strict ideals isn't developing good software, they're doing Agile masturbation.

That said, anyone writing production code without a test suite is making an even bigger mistake than doing any of the above. Building a good test suite is a very hard problem, and you really need to tailor what you build and how you test with your team and your product.

vineet• 16 years ago

James, I agree with you point, but I don't feel the answer is in just saying that "you're doing it wrong". I think we need to figure out the main cases of such failing TDD instances, document it, and raise awareness so that we can be vigilant - if only to make sure that an inexperienced developer does not make these mistakes.

Are You Wasting Time With Test Driven Development?

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