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Comment by SoftwareMaven | Hacker News Reader

No one's forcing you to write your tests first

That is very likely not true. If TDD is your "process" at work, then you are being forced to write your tests first.

If TDD was chosen to be your process because of erroneous assumptions about the values of TDD, its strengths and its weaknesses, and those erroneous assumptions are a result of religious zealotry squashing the heretics rather than reasoned debate, then you have a problem.

Religion belongs in the church, not in software. It frustrates me how poor the technical debates in software can be because people get so attached to their technology. It is directly analogous to an artist demanding a specific type of paint for all their work who freak out when somebody says "you know, a gallon of latex paint might be better than that tube of acrylic for painting the walls in here."

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Unless someone is hovering over your shoulder, how is your employer going to tell the difference if you just commit tests and code together?

Pair programming. I'm half-joking, but sometimes it is used like that.

Isn't pair programming where you sit back and think about kittens while someone else monopolizes your keyboard? If they want to write the tests first, let 'em.

> Isn't pair programming where you sit back and think about kittens while someone else monopolizes your keyboard?

No, it's not. If that's how you define it, you've never pair programmed.

I think you're being a bit overly sensitive. I'm describing what you can do other than quit if you don't want to do pair programming. Nobody ever says no to carte blanche to do whatever they want, and if you give them your keyboard, they won't even know you're mentally watching YouTube videos involving rainbows, a repeating soundtrack, and pop-tarts taped to cats.

I forgot, anti-TDD is the trend these days. Should have made a joke about TDD being an STD in the programming world. Much better then actually contributing or correcting those who are wrong.

I have experienced this scenario first hand. It made me quit my otherwise fairly well paid new job.

I know all too well, though I was being a little oblique about it. Also, your religious TDD folks and your religious pair programmers are often the same people (same religion?)

> If TDD is your "process" at work, then you are being forced to write your tests first.

Not necessarily. Usually you're only required to write a test before you start working on a specific feature. If you just want to research something I've never seen anyone who'd get in the way of you pulling up a REPL.

But even so, saying you're forced to is like saying your company forces you to check your work into a VCS before they'll give you credit for having written it. Or forces you to fix bugs/add features from a list instead of just ad-hoc.

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