I have been doing more development over the last couple of months and I have tried to use Test Driven Development to write code. I have found that you don't get anywhere fast using TDD. However, TDD is a GREAT way to learn a new framework. It makes it easy to learn an API and how things work. In my professional life, I use tests to ensure that I have killed a bug, or if something has some whacky / intricate business logic, I may use tests to ensure I get it right. A great example of this was validation of an ActionForm that had a couple of if this is filled in, then check for something else type of logics in it. Testing something like that through the browser would be very time consuming and easy to miss something. This is where unit tests shine.
I agree with a couple of points that Paul makes. Why would you want to spend a load of time on unit tests that often change. I was wondering if maybe Paul and I are not using TDD correctly. Maybe our OOP is faulty, and therefor causing our TDD to take longer than it should or be more involved than it should be. Being a slight rookie at development I tend to lean towards me doing something wrong.
Posted by carl at January 1, 2004 05:10 PM
Comments