A lot of people act as if TDD is the be all and end all for development. I’ve tried to do it, but I simply cannot stick with it.
My testing time is separate from my development time. When I sit down at my desk, I usually make a decision right away. I go into it knowing I’m going to either focus on application features or catch up on tests. There are arguably many reasons to not do it this way, and probably number one being to not move past broken code. And I agree with that. If you’re a person who can handle the one-two punch of the method/test combo, more power to you. But I have to be in a certain mood to write (worthwhile) tests, and it’s usually never when I’m in the mood to work on application features/styling.
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Believe me, TDD and BDD is a lot of work. It can be very tiring. In the end, it has saved me when I needed to test a confusing method over and over rather than having to make ten different clicks in the browser.
However... I have no discipline to write tests consistently. I spent some time trying to write tests for all the models in slate, but like documentation, it feels impossible to keep it all up to date.
Then, there’s the fact that the majority of my code isn’t really Ruby, but rather UI-related. And while there are tests for that, it feels almost pointless, let alone extremely brittle given how often we work on improving the UI.
One thing I’ve found with regard to writing tests is that it’s often sufficient enough to write tests when you need them. Sure, it’s not the best solution, but it’s better than nothing.
I’m going to see if I can drop MDD as a buzzword in a meeting later this afternoon. Like it.
It’s weird, though, because when I do get finished writing a bunch of tests, I feel good. So it’s almost like I know I’ll be happier if I would just do it, but I can’t. And for whatever reason, it’s pleasing to see [n] tests/assertions with no errors/failures.
By the same token, I would also be incredibly happy with myself if I could get out of bed every morning and go lift or do some form of exercise, but that’s a no go as well.