Re:The Pragmatics of TDD
by codeulike on Wednesday March 06, 2013 @11:29AM
(#5331969)
The measure is: Find a startup that uses TDD religously, find one that just uses it when it suits them, find one that doesn't use TDD at all. Fix all other variables. See which startup does the best. This is a hard experiment to do but if anyone want to offer me a grant for the research, get in touch. Thanks.
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Too many variables, IMHO (dev experience, team size, technology stack, etc.). Startups in particular are inherently volatile places, and basing such a study on them is fraught with problems.
Most notably, the measure of "success" in startup-land is not irrevocably tied to code quality. Plenty of projects have succeeded despite their engineering and not because of it.
> Fix all other variables.
That's literally impossible to do in a straight one to one comparison. If nothing else, you have different people working at each one.
A broader study might get enough data to make meaningful comparisons, but I think strict TDD is too rare to get more than a few samples. It's a tough problem. I think you'd have to set up a completely artificial environment if you truly want to measure the relative efficiency of TDD.