The training wheels analogy was the weakest part of the article to me. TDD isn't a teaching tool, and the fact that they useless to people in a very specialized niche doesn't really say anything about their general value.
I also notice reference to writing tests after the fact. I understand TDD to involve writing tests first. That's how I practice it anyway.
Re:It's OK Not to Write Unit Tests
by ZeroGravitas on Tuesday May 25, 2010 @05:06AM
(#1376877)
That's just poisoning the well. Yes, X is fine if you're an idiot is exactly what you would say if you didn't want to have a conversation about something and would rather shut down discussion.
this is one of his worst arguments. I find it almost exactly the opposite. I've been programming for almost 20 years and I am considering myself an expert. and many people around seem to agree ;).
most of the beginning was spent w/o any kind of unit testing. But I find it that I do more and more testing with time, and I'm sure as hell I'm not becoming a weaker programmer that suddenly needs the training wheels ;)
cashto emphasized that unit testing is useful for teams with non-expert programmers (viz. his comment about the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition). Many of us are non-experts who benefit from working with the TDD training wheels on; it's O.K. to be less a Jedi All-Star hacker. But the phenomenal programmers, the men and women who were 10 times better than me, could not be bothered with TDD, even through the endorsed it for mere mortals.
To paraphrase the TDD credo of “no test is worse than having no tests”, we can assert that blind faith is not better than no faith at all.