Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see this same attitude about TDD adoption - teams in my company say things like “testing is for lackeys / that work is beneath us”, I.e. they see that as the responsibility of QA testers who are less important in their view. This is short sighted, arrogant and encourages similar problems with superiority complexes. TDD is still controversial in some circles, but engineers who have a deep understanding of both tests…
TDD is fine when you have a specification to work to. A lot of software development in the real world is quite "experimental". Requirements are poor so devs need to provide what is essentially a prototype and receive feedback until it is good enough.
Agreed and that’s what spiking is for! Once you have an idea of the solution then you can implement properly with TDD, which generally results in a much better design than just going with the original spike. However, I find it bizarre that many engineers think unit testing is beneath them. I can understand that people find it difficult to stick to the test first discipline. But it’s crazy to me that you wouldn’t want to write tests at all.. I feel so much happier with the additional protection.