Here are some common misconceptions about TDD. I call them “myths” here, for short.
If this feels like talking to the dentists about your teeth, you are not alone. When I talk about tests sometimes people gets embarrassed about their habits, “I know you’re right but …”.
When I started to work as a freshly graduated computer scientist in the mid-nineties I was immediately assigned to a project programming C++. I certainly did my best to implement the functionality with the best quality I could manage to produce, but when thinking back to it, it is no surprise that the result was not very good, the code was actually quite bad. This was pre-XP and Agile time; pair-programming was not widely used and in the first couple of projects we didn’t even code review our code before delivery. Luckily I read a lot of books and articles and studied code examples written by gurus in the field, and after a while I got a good feeling of how to organize and designing the code in order to make it maintainable. What I really would have liked to have during this time was guidance from an experienced programmer helping me to improve my coding skills.
I’m a big fan of the software craftsmanship movement; software development is a craft and you need to practice continuously in order to deliver quality software and customer value. I see myself as a journeyman who steadily is gaining new knowledge and experience in how to implement software. I read a lot to get new input and I practice my coding skills as much as possible beside my ordinary programming assignments. So in the spirit of craftsmanship I would like to give an apprentice, someone new in the profession, some guidance that I myself would have loved getting during my first year as a software developer.
In this day and age with unstable economics, constant change in how to work with software, new languages and databases popping up from nowhere, it is important to cement yourself into your position at work.
Follow this guide and be sure of never being fired, no matter what.Continue reading