On Wednesday, 19 June 2013 at 11:01:05 UTC, Szymon Gatner wrote:
D is the only language (that I am aware of) that has first class unit testing support. What do you think? Do we really just "mentally masturbate"?
Let us distinguish between "writing tests" and "test-driven development".
I am for all for "writing tests" where it makes sense. I do not subscribe to 100% test coverage. Sometimes other things have higher priority (time-to-market, fun, return-of-investment, politics, etc). I consider 100% an ideal, which can be thought about from time to time. It is not a good recommendation for rookies or best practice.
Test-driven development is an interesting beast. If you listen to the inventors, it makes a lot of sense in the scenarios they are talking about: Consultant creating or modifying a component in an enterprise environment.
Continuous refactoring tries to evenly distribute the technical debt, so developers can be moved in and out of the project without friction. Without continuous refactoring someone can get the fame, while leaving the technical debt to somebody else. Test coverage enables continuous refactoring because you can check the component in isolation, if your refactoring did not break anything. The test-first principle ensures good test coverage. Considering this reasoning, TDD can be seen as an approach for managing technical debt.
