Is TDD Dead?

A series of conversations between Kent Beck, David Heinemeier Hansson, and myself on the topic of Test-Driven Development (TDD) and its impact upon software design.

Where This Came From

A provocative talk and blog posts has led to a conversation where we aim to understand each others' views and experiences

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1: TDD and Confidence

9 May 2014

We talk about our varying experiences with the flow of TDD, and the way TDD and self-testing code are often confused.

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2: Test-induced design damage

16 May 2014

David feels that using TDD leads to approaches such as hexagonal rails that is test-induced design damage due to the complexity of excessive indirection. Kent thinks it's less about TDD and more about the quality of design decisions.

Before watching this conversation you should look at the gist David prepared to show an example of the design damage he is concerned about. You might also watch the video where the much-missed Jim Weirich explores this approach to a hexagonal architecture.

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3: Feedback and QA

20 May 2014

We discuss the various ways in which we get feedback while programming and the role of QA in providing feedback to developers.

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4: Costs of Testing

27 May 2014

We discuss some downsides of testing and TDD: can you do too much testing, and is there a problem with teams valuing tests more than they value the functional code?

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5: Answering Questions

4 June 2014

We answer questions from our viewers: what open-source examples of TDD exist, what changes would make us change our use of TDD, and how well it works for inexperienced developers. We finish by summing up our view of the health of TDD.

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