I just wrote the following missive to some of my colleagues. Then I realized it would make a good blog entry, so here ya go…
The seasons are turning here [in Central Oregon] and it’s a little gray outside. I actually had to turn on the heater in my office! So, I’m dragging a little bit as a result and am looking to “shake things up” a little bit in my little office world in order to keep making progress. So I am listing what I need to do on my current project in priority order:
1) Write test client for normal life cycle
…
Wow, two years ago, that would’ve been at the bottom of my list (and thus fallen off) of a project. Then my mind speeds off to how different that thinking is than the way I was taught (albeit that was 20+ years ago but probably unchanged until relatively recently). And I thought, if I were teaching an introduction to programming class (or intro to Ruby or Java or whatever), the very first topic of discussion and the first assignment would be:
Writing tests.
I can’t think of any other fundamental change during the life of my career other than the advent of object-oriented programming that has had such a positive impact on my code quality and productivity. Being able to write tests FIRST and then write code that satisfies those tests is a lot like having a simple coloring book that has the picture drawn — you just need to color inside the lines. Sometimes it’s “too much” to think about everything that comprises a programming problem, and I’ve found that I can get traction simply by writing a test and then making it work. I also discover TONS about how I want the code to look, and I find that by writing tests I don’t like the way I thought I was going to write it and now I can fix it. Finally, you end up with a PILE of test code as a happy side-effect which you can run any time and feel confident you haven’t fucked anything up along the way.
The net effect of Test Driven Development is:
– better quality code, by far
– faster resolution of problems
– ultimately faster time to completion
Let me underline that last point: faster time to completion. Typically when we’re “under the gun,” we think it’ll be faster to dive in and be “quick and efficient” to write something, obviating test code. Although this is true some of the time, I’d argue that it is not true the majority of the time.
I hope that my relentless preaching about testing eventually tires you all out enough that you start doing it if you haven’t already. There are very few things in my life that I am zealous about — TDD is one of them.
Well said!!