[LRUG] TDD (was: Ruby Contracting)

[Tom Stuart]

On 19 Feb 2009, at 10:16, Chris Parsons wrote:
> Writing good tests is harder than most people think, and there's no  
> substitute for manual tests.

Without taking sides, what surprises me is how few people say anything  
about just how hard it is to write useful, robust, intelligible, non- 
brittle tests (especially for e.g. Rails applications) and how much  
time it takes to create and maintain them. Common wisdom is that this  
investment of time and effort more than pays off in quality and  
stability but, well, is that appealing idea necessarily always true?  
Is there really nobody in the world who actually wastes time writing  
tests?

Cheers,
-Tom