Have you read the original TDD book by Kent Beck? The book is not dogmatic at all, it just proposes tests as a way to move forward when the scope is too big to keep everything in your head.

Most blogs I see on TDD actually go against the original principle. Coverage is a side effect, not the goal.

Kent Beck's the kind of down to earth programmer many would look up to, and part of it is because of how he wrote the original book.

> Every ultra-dogmatic TDD programmer I've met has also generally been weirdly argumentative about literally everything.

Have you considered that has nothing to do with TDD and everything to do with being ultra-dogmatic?

I should have been more clear: I've never met anyone who's into TDD and isn't ultra-dogmatic about it.