Re:TDD did not live up to expectations
by ericgunnerson on Thursday June 29, 2017 @08:20PM
(#14667851)
Original author here.
I get your point, but it's not really about not doing TDD right. It's about TDD evangelists - and I used to be one of those - advocating that people should use TDD despite those people not having the skills to do TDD "right". And my experience is that not only is doing TDD without those skills not a fun experience, the resulting code is worse than if you let those same developers write the code the way they are used to, and maybe spend some teaching time on refactoring because it's a more basic skill.
This article should be renamed, “TDD doesn’t work if you don’t do it right.”
This article seems to argue for Big Design Up Front. Ok, if you do that, then why not write the tests for those designs after you make the design – then the code you write confirms to the design.
I don’t think anyone advocates that writing tests is the same as the design process. Tests are the result of design not the other way around. The gray area is not design up front – but how much design up front.