TDD and writing styles

14 April 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

I mentioned in my last post about test-driven writing what the idea of test-driven development (TDD) is all about. Because of that post, I had a thought that connected TDD with writing styles. And I'm going to explain that to you, but first some background.

There's some debate going on around TDD lately. A big name in the programming world said that TDD is no longer the way to go. That was good news to me because I've struggled with that approach. When I first heard of it, I really loved the idea and I thought it was such a great way to make a solid program.

But in practice, I'm terrible at it.

After my last post, I was thinking about me being terrible at it, and somehow my brain connected the idea of writing styles. It made me wonder if I'm not good at TDD because I'm a discovery writer. And I wonder if architectural coders are better at TDD.

Maybe we're approaching programming incorrectly. Maybe TDD isn't for every team, not because of the technical problem being solved or the environment they're in, but because of the people and their coding/writing styles.

But…

I talked to my friend who is a programmer and an architectural writer and he didn't think the two things correlate. He isn't good at TDD. It might be because he learned programming before it became a thing, but he thinks that his mind is just wired to write code first and then write tests, not the other way around.

So his coding style is the same as his writing style—which is not of the discovery or gardener style—but TDD still isn't the way his brain works.

Even if he had agreed with me, it would only be anecdotal evidence, so either way it's not conclusive yet, but I may have jumped the gun on this idea. He thinks TDD was mainly a way to get people to write tests in lieu of no tests at all.

Oh well

Even if this isn't true, it sure makes me feel better about myself and how I just can't do TDD. It makes me worry if I'll be able to do test-driven writing. But at the same time, maybe that's okay, because maybe it will really be great for some people and not work out for others. Some people are architects and some people are gardeners (discovery writers).

Which are you and are you good at TDD?