Comments on: Twelve Benefits of Writing Unit Tests First

By: Doug

Doug — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:44:54 +0000

I am new to TDD, having been driven there in desperation after my brain ran out of space to contain enough of the code in working memory to debug it. When you need a bigger brain, it’s time for unit tests.

As a newbie (but I hope a rational one) I am assessing the pros and cons of this approach.
Pros: No need for a bigger brain
I can write tests in the language of my choice (python & numpy in my case)
[insert 12 other reasons here]

Cons: I am writing mathematical functions so I still need code to generate the tests (unless I test at the level of A=B*C, which is silly), so the code is written twice
Significant refactoring of code requires significant refactoring of the tests unless I write the “God test” which is useful, but hardly TDD

By: Blog-to Show Visitors, Welcome! » J. Timothy King's Blog

Blog-to Show Visitors, Welcome! » J. Timothy King's Blog — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:32:29 +0000

[...] “Twelve Benefits of Writing Unit Tests First” [...]

By: Geek Drivel » Blog Archive » “Twelve Benefits of Writing Unit Tests First”

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:33:48 +0000

[...] ran across this post today. It’s more than a year old, but it’s still quite [...]

By: J. Timothy King’s Blog » Blog Archive » Does Bad Writing Reflect Poor Programming Skills?

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 16:12:34 +0000

[...] Understand the material before you write. If you understand the material, you should be able to explain it to a four-year-old. If you don’t understand it, you won’t be able to explain it to anyone. You’d think this would go without saying. You’d think that programmers particularly would understand the code they write. But frequently they don’t. If they did, they would use unit tests. Instead, they tweak and hack until the code does what they think it’s supposed to. And they end up with a mess. And then they do it to their comments and other documents, too. This is what causes a lot of comments like “This member is the anticipation for audio data to synchronize with the video frames in an interleaved AVI.” The developer who wrote this probably knew how to tweak the data value to get the result he wanted. But he very possibly did not understand what that value actually represented and how it conceptually fit into the rest of the system. [...]

By: links for 2006-10-18 « Ashish Kulkarni’s Journal

links for 2006-10-18 « Ashish Kulkarni’s Journal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:27:12 +0000

[...] Twelve Benefits of Writing Unit Tests First The ones I found significant: [...]

By: Twelve benefits for doing TDD « exceptionz

Twelve benefits for doing TDD « exceptionz — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 11:25:39 +0000

[...] J. Timothy King list the following twelve benefits you get from doing Test-First programming: [...]

By: Йордан Димитров

Йордан Димитров — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 09:17:17 +0000

Интересни връзки 2

C# Best Coding Practices
Naming Conventions for UI ControlsStringBuilder
vs. String / Fast String Operations…

By: Exploded Clown » Blog Archive » Twelve Benefits of Writing Unit Tests First

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 03:53:02 +0000

[...] Twelve Benefits of Writing Unit Tests First: How do you solve a software problem? How do they teach you to handle it in school? What’s the first thing you do? You think about how to solve it. You ask, “What code will I write to generate a solution?” But that’s backward. The first thing you should be doing— In fact, this is what they say in school, too, though in my experience it’s paid more lip-service than actual service— The first thing you ask is not “What code will I write?” The first thing you ask is “How will I know that I’ve solved the problem?” [...]

By: Paul, Kerri and The Boys » links for 2006-07-30

Paul, Kerri and The Boys » links for 2006-07-30 — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 05:07:44 +0000

[...] Twelve Benefits of Writing Unit Tests First TDD (tags: pm scrum work sdlc) [...]

By: Orbiz Technology Blog

Orbiz Technology Blog — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 20:49:05 +0000

Twelve benefits for doing TDD