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I've long argued against people who say TDD is 'just as quick' when you get used to it. It's simply not true. I still test everything however, the payoffs are m

I've long argued against people who say TDD is 'just as quick' when you get used to it. It's simply not true. I still test everything however, the payoffs are multitude. It's important to accustom your product managers to your velocity when tests are included.

radicalbyte 11y ago
TDD, or at least effective use of automated tests can make implementation much faster and code better. Mappings + conversions are such a case. For example if you're using an ORM being able to test the mappings in seconds will increase velocity. Or if you've written a function to convert type T0 to type T1, then automatically testing all combinations of T is very effective.
- darkFunction 11y ago
  Absolutely agree that it can. For cases like you mention, where it's convenient to be able to rapidly test the outcome of a piece of code, it can be orders of magnitude faster and you have a greater confidence in the end result. On average though, it takes longer (as summarised in the article).
mreiland 11y ago
This is why I don't trust TDD proponents. I'm not against TDD itself, or unit testing as a whole, but I'm also not 20 y/o college kid. There is absolutely no way the increase in workload of TDD doesn't have a cost. It's a question of tradeoffs, something I've said many many times, and the research appears to be bearing that out. No one who is being honest can really say with a straight face that development with TDD is actively faster unless they're naive or they're using cherry picked examples.
- UK-AL 11y ago
  Its faster in terms development + time spent fixing bugs. If you want it out now, but have loads of bugs sure. But i'm pretty sure most managers don't mean that, when they say they want it out sooner.
  - mreiland 11y ago
    Not even the research bears that out.
- BurningFrog 11y ago
  > There is absolutely no way the increase in workload of TDD doesn't have a cost. TDD has both costs and benefits. Like most everything else.

radicalbyte 11y ago

TDD, or at least effective use of automated tests can make implementation much faster and code better. Mappings + conversions are such a case. For example if you're using an ORM being able to test the mappings in seconds will increase velocity. Or if you've written a function to convert type T0 to type T1, then automatically testing all combinations of T is very effective.

darkFunction 11y ago
Absolutely agree that it can. For cases like you mention, where it's convenient to be able to rapidly test the outcome of a piece of code, it can be orders of magnitude faster and you have a greater confidence in the end result. On average though, it takes longer (as summarised in the article).

mreiland 11y ago

This is why I don't trust TDD proponents. I'm not against TDD itself, or unit testing as a whole, but I'm also not 20 y/o college kid. There is absolutely no way the increase in workload of TDD doesn't have a cost. It's a question of tradeoffs, something I've said many many times, and the research appears to be bearing that out. No one who is being honest can really say with a straight face that development with TDD is actively faster unless they're naive or they're using cherry picked examples.

UK-AL 11y ago
Its faster in terms development + time spent fixing bugs. If you want it out now, but have loads of bugs sure. But i'm pretty sure most managers don't mean that, when they say they want it out sooner.
- mreiland 11y ago
  Not even the research bears that out.
BurningFrog 11y ago
> There is absolutely no way the increase in workload of TDD doesn't have a cost. TDD has both costs and benefits. Like most everything else.