[LRUG] TDD (was: Ruby Contracting)

[Chris Parsons]

On 19 Feb 2009, at 10:22, Tom Stuart wrote:

> 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?

I've wasted many hours writing tests for features for which the  
investment just wasn't justified, and kicked myself for not writing  
tests for things that really needed them. It's all part of the  
learning curve. Test where the risk is[1], and read blogs by people  
like Jay Fields and Pat Maddox - they have some very interesting  
discussion on testing techniques.

I think the biggest mistake people make is thinking that starting to  
write tests is going to yield a huge instant payoff with no effort.  
There is a small instant payoff, a lot more learning, and a real  
danger of overconfidence.

We need to write about testing on our blog more. It's not easy at all,  
but if you're disciplined about it does work for in your favour[2].

Oh, and there are no sides here ... this is positive open-minded  
debate, right? :)

Chris

[1] Someone famous said this; no idea who.
[2] Well, not when we're doing stuff for fun which doesn't matter much  
(http://ykyat.com :)

--
Chris Parsons
Managing Director
Eden Development (UK) Ltd

chris at edendevelopment.co.uk
www.edendevelopment.co.uk

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