TDD is BS?

[Walter Bright]

On 6/21/2013 3:04 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> But I do some researcher about TDD and similar techniques, use
> my common sense, pick some pieces from here and there and use what I think works.

I've been around long enough to have seen an endless parade of magic new 
techniques du jour, most of which purport to remove the necessity of thought 
about your programming problem.

In the end they wind up contributing one or two pieces to the collective wisdom, 
and fade away in the rearview mirror.

But there is one technique that stands head and shoulders above the others in 
improving code quality, sometimes dramatically so. That's unit testing coupled 
with a coverage analyzer.

I can't even count the number of times I thought "this is so simple, I couldn't 
have gotten it wrong, I doan need no steeenkin unit tests." But I write a couple 
anyway, and you can guess the rest.

Whether you write the unit tests before, during, or after the module is written 
is irrelevant.