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TDD Doesn't Work

blog.cleancoder.com

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Re: TDD Doesn't Work

#91

Post by alphanumeric0 »

gozur88 wrote: post #34
liquidise wrote: post #2

Commenting on TDD stories here is historically a bad practice, but i'll add my input here. I have never let my teams go full TDD. The reason is that in all my experience, TDD sacrifices a lot of velocity for the sake of automated tests. When i hear about the reduction in total bugs injected, it is a "duh" moment. The fastest way to make a team inject 30% fewer bugs is to have them write 30% less code. That isn't snar…

That's been my experience. I would add that TDD is the antithesis of "agile", since any changes you make to your product will require changes to the tests. Sometimes large changes.

In my experience, the large changes to my tests were a result of having to make large changes in product behavior.

Re: TDD Doesn't Work

#92

Post by AgentME »

digibo wrote: post #25
kendallpark wrote: post #4

I'm definitely in the TDD-is-not-a-one-size-fits-all programming style camp and I'm glad to see a study that supports that conclusion. I was at Railsconf when DHH said his bit in 2014. My office and I followed the subsequent debates between him and Kent Beck (since my dev group was largely pro-TDD). Lots of anecdotal arguments. It's nice to see some more quantitative data on this! In my programming experience I've fo…

I read the article, but I haven't read the study. The article seems to show that the study is useless - it proves nothing, it's neither pro-TDD, nor anti-TDD. Taking a seemingly strong side of an argument supported by the study, but not commenting on the linked article itself, can explain the downvotes.

If the study showed anything, it was that TDD and TLD might be similarly useful at least on short timescales. I think GP was saying that they believed tests were useful, but that it was unnecessary to strictly stick to doing them the TDD way.

Re: TDD Doesn't Work

#93

Post by convolvatron »

bunderbunder wrote: post #49
liquidise wrote: post #2

Commenting on TDD stories here is historically a bad practice, but i'll add my input here. I have never let my teams go full TDD. The reason is that in all my experience, TDD sacrifices a lot of velocity for the sake of automated tests. When i hear about the reduction in total bugs injected, it is a "duh" moment. The fastest way to make a team inject 30% fewer bugs is to have them write 30% less code. That isn't snar…

I think that this all goes straight back to the old "mockist TDD vs classical TDD" debate.

could you elaborate? i think this is my ignorance. The one shop that I worked in that insisted on 'mocks' meant that i wrote some code, then ran that code on some inputs, recorded the outputs, and then wrote a harness which validated that those inputs matched the outputs.

which meant that changes to the code might result in a failed mock, but didn't say anything about coverage or correctness. i can't imagine a more useless testing strategy.

is that what mockist TDD is commonly understood to be?

Re: TDD Doesn't Work

#94

Post by c3RlcGhlbnI_ »

spronkey wrote: post #89
c3RlcGhlbnI_ wrote: post #32

Oh man, it is really funny that he ends it with telling people to read the study. To clarify the linked study is attempting to replicate https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1070834 , THE seminal study in Test Driven Development. Well to be more precise it was replicating an existing replication of that study which failed to replicate the original results. They were trying to modify the design so as to account for issu…

Probably because they have a sense of humour, and the conversational style makes it more entertaining to read...?

Is it entertaining or funny if you identify with the character who is talking down? I mean this particular example doesn't seem to contain any jokes from my reading.

Re: TDD Doesn't Work

#95

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

justicezyx wrote: post #77
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, in my case what ends up happening is I start out with no tests but soon the project becomes huge and i have to start writing tests if I want to push stuff without fear. The thing is, most large companies have a QA team so this fear is not super tangible to many developers. And small startups are more focused on building stuff quickly (which they should be). I think this is why this topic has been polarizing.…

> most large companies have a QA team Not sure what companies you are referring here. Google and Amazon does not have QA team for most of dev team. I worked at Amazon and now work at Google.

There are many other large companies other than Amazon and Google.

Just because Google and Amazon don't have QA team doesn't mean the occupation doesn't exist.

Re: TDD Doesn't Work

#96

Post by adamconroy »

That blog post could pretty much apply the same arguments to itself. And who knows if Bob's experience is simply correlation not causation. Perhaps Bob is just a smart, meticulous engineer, and it wouldn't matter how he went about his dev work, the quality may be good regardless.

Re: TDD Doesn't Work

#97

Post by plinkplonk »

In all discussions about TDD, it is important to distinguish between having having an automated test suite for your code which is run frequently, and writing your code test first - which is what TDD is, by definition.

It is possible to advocate for the former, while thinking the latter is consultantware snake oil. (my position, fwiw)

Re: TDD Doesn't Work

#98

Post by liquidise »

kendallpark wrote: post #4

I'm definitely in the TDD-is-not-a-one-size-fits-all programming style camp and I'm glad to see a study that supports that conclusion. I was at Railsconf when DHH said his bit in 2014. My office and I followed the subsequent debates between him and Kent Beck (since my dev group was largely pro-TDD). Lots of anecdotal arguments. It's nice to see some more quantitative data on this! In my programming experience I've fo…

> Do the TDD fanatics downvote to hell everything anti-TDD?

I didn't mean to criticize either stance with the statement. I said that because i find most TDD threads on HN get very heated, with commenters being highly polarized and entrenched in their opinions. I've avoided commenting them on the past because of this. But i am happy the discussions under this story are a great deal more civil and informative.

Re: TDD Doesn't Work

#99

Post by justicezyx »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #95
justicezyx wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most large companies have a QA team Not sure what companies you are referring here. Google and Amazon does not have QA team for most of dev team. I worked at Amazon and now work at Google.

There are many other large companies other than Amazon and Google. Just because Google and Amazon don't have QA team doesn't mean the occupation doesn't exist.

I do not intend to say QA as an type of engineering position does not exist. What I was responding to is the parent's claim that "most large companies have a QA team so this fear is not super tangible to many developers"; that's not true in general.
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