Why I Hate Test Driven Development
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Why I Hate Test Driven Development
1–10 of 69 posts
Re: Why I Hate Test Driven Development
#2I can relate to this sentiment. I've always described software development as moments of great frustration followed by great satisfaction. I just love the feeling that comes after you've squashed a nasty bug.
Re: Why I Hate Test Driven Development
#3I hate TDD because I have to actually debug them, sometime more so than the actual app themselves. Also, there's the issue of slow TDD suite, which means you have to optimize them or otherwise it will slow down your development pace.
TDD is only good when it provide more benefits than its negative(debugging time, time waiting for it to run, time spent ripping out code).
That being said, it's better than 0 test. Just don't get crazy in writing testcase for every minute scenarios.
Re: Why I Hate Test Driven Development
#4This is a good thing, isn’t it? So why do I hate TDD?
Because debugging is fun. There, I said it. I love debugging. I think lots of clever people like debugging.
I've been doing embedded development for quite some time, so you know, flipping bits like a boss, a shitload of open terminals, lots of cables everywhere all the stuff that makes you look like you know what you're doing but debugging is not fun, it never was, it's a huge waste of my time.
You know what's fun? Having a product that works.
Debugging is code monkey job, you don't do it because you're smart, you're doing it because you were foolish.
To love debugging is to not love to code.
Re: Why I Hate Test Driven Development
#5Some people should debug their irony detector code as this is clearly irony. Great irony :)
Re: Why I Hate Test Driven Development
#6I can't be the only one who thinks this is meant to be sarcasm?
Re: Why I Hate Test Driven Development
#7I can kinda relate to having fun fixing bugs, but I think (i addition to some sarcasm) the author is kinda romanticizing debugging. 90% of the time it's no fun, feels like a waste of time and doesn't really provide much satisfaction. Once in a while, though, you do find a really interesting bug and fix it and it feels pretty great!
Re: Why I Hate Test Driven Development
#8I can't be the only one who thinks this is meant to be sarcasm?
Yeah, it's very subtle. He's essentially saying that the TDD approach has made his code is flawless, and he is incapable of producing bugs.
Re: Why I Hate Test Driven Development
#9It is easy, don't TDD every project.
Wasted some time on TDD before, slow, like robot, generate tons of code that never be shipped. Nowadays, I just read through the code like it was written by another idiot, understand it, and you know what, I am actually refactor it more often, and keep improving it even though it doesn't fix a known bug. You have better understanding of your code, and then when something goes wrong, it is pretty easy for you to figure out what could be the cause. However, this approach doesn't fit for thrown-away type of projects.
Re: Why I Hate Test Driven Development
#10This is a good thing, isn’t it? So why do I hate TDD? Because debugging is fun. There, I said it. I love debugging. I think lots of clever people like debugging. I've been doing embedded development for quite some time, so you know, flipping bits like a boss, a shitload of open terminals, lots of cables everywhere all the stuff that makes you look like you know what you're doing but debugging is not fun, it never was…
I debug because I'm smart, and I enjoy it, and I frequently find bugs that I didn't know existed by seeing inside a frame as it's executing. Debugging is a crucial skill in many fields, particularly embedded work (which is the irony in your comment), and the insight from breakpoints and a couple afternoons of digging is unique among our tools. I hate sweeping generalizations of how programming should be done, regardless of what they are.
Watch this sweeping generalization:
If you don't love debugging, I don't think you're a seasoned or valuable programmer.