TDD as in religion is overrated. TDD done right is IMHO extremely effective.
The problem is, writing good tests is really hard, and I have seen/committed/experienced a lot of bad tests… just the top of my mind problems with TDD done wrong:
- testing the implementation instead the interface
- creating a change detector
- not writing / factoring the tests in a good way
- writing tests / TDD w/o having an overall design for the software
For every non trivial piece of software written w/o TDD, I always saw the same pattern: First few hours/days/weeks, rapid progress compared to TDD, afterwards: hours/days/weeks wasted in debugging, bug fixing etc… and the people can not even catch up with tests if they wanted.
Is TDD always the answer? Of course not, it is a tradeoff like everything else in technology. OTOH I have yet to see a project which benefited from not using TDD by any metric after a few days in.
Amen! One thing which drives me crazy is that most people confuse beginner friendly and user friendly, the two things are absolutely not the same thing. There is nothing wrong with having tools which are beginner friendly, especially for stuff one does once in a while. There is everything wrong with nerving tools which are for pros or even everyday usage: If I use something everyday I have rather an optimization for the mid or long run, than for the first few hours…