Why TDD isn't crap

Re:Why TDD isn't crap by Verdex_3 on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @12:45PM (#15594603)

Although on the other hand, writing your test first with no code and having it fail isn't really telling you much about the test. It just shows that the test handles the least interesting case (the case where there exists no code). You still don't know that your test is correct when you get it passing. You just know that it is correct when no code exists.

For example,

    TestSort(ISorter sorter)
    {
        var input = { 1, 2, 3, 4 };
        var output = sorter( input );
        Assert.IsSorted( output );
    }

This test will fail if you run it before the ISorter is implemented. But then it will pass if you implement an empty ISorter because the test still has problems (ie it starts with sorted input).

Cue the ever familiar: You still have to use your brain when using TDD.

If TDD needs brain usage to function, maybe the real thing that is useful is the brain usage and TDD is vestigial.

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Re:Why TDD isn't crap by lowbloodsugar on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @01:18PM (#15594835)

If someone gave me that test, I'd implement the code as "return input;"

Forget that you, a human, thinks you know what an ISorter should do. What do the tests demand that you do?

Doing TDD, the goal, when coding, is to write the minimal amount of broken code that makes the test pass. If you passed me {4,3,2,1}, then my code would be "return {1,2,3,4};". If you wrote a second test that passed me {6,5,4,3}, my code would be "return (input[0]==4)?{1,2,3,4}:{3,4,5,6};". You've got to write a test that makes me actually code what you want. I use this adversarial approach even when I'm writing both the test and the code.

Usually the first test I write if I'm starting with a blank slate, is to pass null and check that I get a NullPointerException. That gets the class created. After that, its got to be randomly generated data.

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Re:Why TDD isn't crap by Verdex_3 on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @03:26PM (#15595834)

And that works fine ... as long as you know all of the cases that will cause the minimal amount of broken code to fail in a test case.

What happens if you're implementing something like a unification algorithm, but you don't know about the occurs check. You'll progressively add test cases that break your code and eventually stop. Until an end user creates a query that contains itself and your algorithm fails to terminate.

The solution to get TDD to work is to know what all of the weird edge cases of your algorithm are. However, I assert that the thing that makes TDD ever work is that the practitioners who are "doing it right" already know all of the weird edge cases of their algorithms. And I assert that if you know the weird edge cases you can drop the test first part of TDD and still get working algorithms.

Random data is interesting because it's not something I've seen anyone mention when they talk about how they do TDD before now. I suppose if you knew nothing about your problem and had some sort of tool progressively feed you intelligently generated random data, that might work for algorithms that have few edge cases or relatively simple edge cases. However, it seems like you would want something more like quick check for cases where you have really esoteric edge cases. And I don't see how you avoid implementing bubble sort (or its equivalent in your domain).

I don't think TDD can't work, but so far nobody has described TDD to me where I have any reason to assume that TDD is actually doing anything worthwhile. It's always sounded like TDD was irrelevant and the real key to success was thinking about the problem carefully. Additionally, it sounds like there are problem domains where anything that TDD might bring to the table would be nullified (ie certain problems that exhibit a certain level of complexity).

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Re:Why TDD isn't crap by lowbloodsugar on Wednesday November 01, 2017 @11:31AM (#15602187)

I can only suggest that you commit to it for some considerable time, such as six months. I, too, thought it was, at first, a fucking stupid idea, and then, when people I respected continued to advocate it, grudgingly tried it, and thought it was a pain in the ass - this was in 2006. However, the number of times where I've written some code that I thought worked, and then commented it out and rewrote it using TDD, and found bugs, is too high. Its rare, but its too high. So either I'm not that great a programmer, or TDD is useful. Another way to think of TDD is rubber ducking, perhaps.

So you're in a local maximum, and to get to the next, higher, maximum, you're going to have to go through a trough.

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Re:Why TDD isn't crap by Verdex_3 on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @01:30PM (#15697786)

I'm not discounting or discrediting your experience. If it worked for you, then great. Unfortunately, my personal experience involves a few decades of "just try it my way and you'll see" ending in disappointment at best and catastrophe at worst. Maybe it's just the way I'm wired.

That being said, if anyone wants to fund me for six months (plus either some compensation to my employer for having me gone for six months OR a significant bonus for my own financial security) to try TDD, then I'll gladly do it.

That being said, I plan on putting it through one heck of a trail. At the end I'll either have a pretty good idea of exactly why TDD works OR I'll have a compelling argument for why it's gains are illusory.

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