Test-Driven Development Bypasses Your Brain

Re:Test-Driven Development Bypasses Your Brain by onemorepassword on Saturday March 16, 2013 @07:46AM (#5385144)

The author made one slight mistake: he wrote "there is a tendency to mindlessly modify code" instead of "I have a tendency to mindlessly modify code".

Also, it's not like this we haven't seen this kind of behavior decades before the invention of TDD.

This is just another example of a craftsman blaming his tools. TDD is not a silver bullet, but no method or tool can serve as an excuse for mindlessly poking around until it works. This isn't limited to programming either.

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Re:Test-Driven Development Bypasses Your Brain by bhaak on Saturday March 16, 2013 @08:03AM (#5385181)

If I only were in the past. I've seen this behavior with coworkers, changing random bits of the code, without any coherent system to speak, rerunning the application from scratch and manually testing if it works now.

I can't describe how shocked I was.

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Re:Test-Driven Development Bypasses Your Brain by ddfreyne on Saturday March 16, 2013 @08:06AM (#5385194)

I admit I did fall into that trap once, long ago. I’m very aware of the consequences now.

The reason for writing the article, however, is because I have seen the same mindless behaviour with other people as well.

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Re:Test-Driven Development Bypasses Your Brain by anthonyb on Saturday March 16, 2013 @08:01AM (#5385173)

He also completely overlooked the refactoring part of the equation, too: write test(s), write code that passes all the tests, then refactor the code until it's shiny enough and still passes the tests.

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Re:Test-Driven Development Bypasses Your Brain by oliao on Saturday March 16, 2013 @08:12AM (#5385202)

I also have the same problem the author has sometimes: If I know that there are a lot of tests covering a particular piece of code, I tend to be less diligent making modifications

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