Why TDD Is Crap
summary
Argues that TDD does not reliably produce fewer bugs or faster delivery, cites only small student comparisons and no strong empirical proof, and shows concrete costs: doubled code to maintain, brittle CI, hours debugging broken tests, and overengineered interfaces that hide integration failures. Recommends concrete alternatives: Eiffel / design by contract for assertions and proofs, QuickCheck / property-based testing to exercise many scenarios, purposeful spikes and upfront design, and continued use of dedicated QA rather than blind faith in unit tests.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:24TDD hype and misconceptions
- 2:34TDD’s four false promises
- 6:47TDD as a design technique
- 8:50TDD’s fun factor and reality
- 10:36Alternatives to TDD
- 13:05TDD as a passing fad
- 14:11Conclusion and Q&A
