TDD is BS?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 01:11:44PM -0700, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 6/21/2013 12:49 PM, John Colvin wrote:
> >If you want a normal programming job, you need to show more real
> >world experience than a PhD, but just throwing out people who have
> >proved their originality and in depth understanding of a topic
> >through a PhD is nothing short of absurd.
> 
> You need a mix of people - young and old, newbies and old hands,
> academics and mechanics, detail guys and big picture guys, to have a
> healthy dev organization.

This reminds me of a HR seminar I attended once, where an example was
given of a particular (real) company who only ever hired top-notch
programmers.  They set their standards very high, and have a review
system that would basically fire anyone whose skills are sub-par. The
guys in charge thought this was going to skyrocket the company into
success.

But what actually happened was, nobody wanted to work on mundane
projects -- maintaining existing systems, keeping the servers running,
doing routine chores necessary for everyday operations, etc.. There was
a lot of infighting on who gets to work on the fun stuff, and the people
who didn't get it began to quit one by one. Eventually, none of the
mundane things were adequately taken care of, and most of the employees
left 'cos they didn't get to do what they wanted, and the company
collapsed.


T

-- 
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