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A comment on An External Replication on the Effects of Test-driven Development [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:An External Replication on the Effects of Test-driven Dev... by rlpb on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @04:12AM (#12741996)
> Consequently writing tests, even if you never actually run them, makes your software better.

It could be argued that an experienced programmer doesn't need TDD to write the same code that TDD could have produced.

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Re:An External Replication on the Effects of Test-driven Dev... by gridspy on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @05:25AM (#12742326)
That used to be my attitude too.

However the experienced programmer will be very happy when they don't have to re-test all of the old functionality manually after a large re-factor of some core code.

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Re:An External Replication on the Effects of Test-driven Dev... by ivan_gammel on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @05:39AM (#12742376)
Experienced programmer may write tests after the main code is complete to make sure nothing is broken during refactoring. It has nothing to do with TDD.
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Re:An External Replication on the Effects of Test-driven Dev... by ivan_gammel on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @04:53AM (#12742189)
That's true. Neither from system design, nor from quality perspective TDD is necessary to produce good code. However, it may still add some value even for experienced programmers, when it's easier to write a test than to build the pure mental model of the domain or the algorithm.
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Re:An External Replication on the Effects of Test-driven Dev... by onion2k on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @08:05AM (#12743021)
I've only been a developer for 20 years so I'm not at that point yet.
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