- Confusion over the definition of TDD and unit testing,
- Test-induced damage through using mocks to drive architecture
- How the red/green/refactor cycle of TDD never worked for him.
David agrees that you're not done till you have tests. But doesn't like TDD as a way to get there. He thinks people have different brains and thus like different techniques, he doesn't like that TDD gets conflated with the confidence you get from writing the tests first.
Kent agrees that there are cases where TDD is not suitable. In the TDDable code he found he was in an enjoyable flow, but found the other part more tricky. But in the non-TDD part he still used regression tests and short feedback loops. He has no problem mixing both styles. TDD reminds him of how he learned mathematics at school - always needing examples.
David has been in situations where TDD flowed well, but most of his work isn't like that - his question is what are you willing to sacrifice to get that flow? Many people make bad trade-offs, especially with heavy mocking.
Kent said he rarely uses them, he's concerned that those that do mock often find refactoring difficult, while he finds testing makes refactoring easier.
David said his reaction was to seeing people describe TDD in a mock-heavy style as a moral thing to do and the result was a lot of code that was poorly designed due to its desire to enable isolated unit tests.
Next episode will explore how TDD may lead to design damage. This is the concise version of the transcript of the video : Is TDD Dead?
