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I struggled through the same thing once I started with TDD. I've never had problems completing and shipping new products (a solo founder i launched 20 saas site

I struggled through the same thing once I started with TDD. I've never had problems completing and shipping new products (a solo founder i launched 20 saas sites last year) but after reading dozens of documents about why TDD is an absolute must for any serious programmer my hubris got the best of me and I decided that I too will join the bandwagon. Boy, was i wrong.. Maybe for big teams it is a must but for solopreneurs and 2 people teams I wasted nearly 8 months before i realized that not only my productivity had rock bottomed but I started hating something that I once passionately loved. Since that day I went back to php and angular js. I do get occasional this feature not working mails but at least I'm creating new sites again and making more money. If there is anything you want to take from this rant is don't waste your time doing things that other people are telling you to (how ironic). Do what you love and you will get shit done.

ozim 10y ago
I am feeling the same. I also bought illusion of superiority for doing it "right". Turns out for small team, SaaS application it is a lot better to "move fast and break things" of course there is "fix bugs even faster" that is missing. But anyway if you prioritise bugs before moving fast all goes well, if not then all TDD in the world with Uncle Bob and Martin Fowler will not help you.
lubonay 10y ago
That's an interesting take on TDD. It's supposed to be a tool that boosts your productivity, have you thought about why it decreased yours?
- superasn 10y ago
  I think it's because I keep changing features, and specs on the fly. The site I plan and the site I actually launch have a difference of day and night and TDD adds a sort of rigidity to that. Creating mocks for API calls, mock Models, etc is just too much overhead. Also the rewards haven't been that significant as people claim, at least for me. My focus right now is to spend most of the time on SEO / marketing / generating leads.
deleted 10y ago
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ernsheong 10y ago
For a small team you should probably only TDD the most critical stuff, and not everything. Stuff that has huge paybacks, critical code. Generally I have been reverting to coding first, unless in scenarios where I waste more time trying to manually test it.
- superasn 10y ago
  You are absolutely correct, but I learned it the hard way. For solopreneurs the time is much better spent on marketing especially generating leads because it gives 1,000 times more return than time spent on writing tests and probably saving a few bugs later.

ozim 10y ago

I am feeling the same. I also bought illusion of superiority for doing it "right". Turns out for small team, SaaS application it is a lot better to "move fast and break things" of course there is "fix bugs even faster" that is missing. But anyway if you prioritise bugs before moving fast all goes well, if not then all TDD in the world with Uncle Bob and Martin Fowler will not help you.

lubonay 10y ago

That's an interesting take on TDD. It's supposed to be a tool that boosts your productivity, have you thought about why it decreased yours?

superasn 10y ago
I think it's because I keep changing features, and specs on the fly. The site I plan and the site I actually launch have a difference of day and night and TDD adds a sort of rigidity to that. Creating mocks for API calls, mock Models, etc is just too much overhead. Also the rewards haven't been that significant as people claim, at least for me. My focus right now is to spend most of the time on SEO / marketing / generating leads.

deleted 10y ago

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ernsheong 10y ago

For a small team you should probably only TDD the most critical stuff, and not everything. Stuff that has huge paybacks, critical code. Generally I have been reverting to coding first, unless in scenarios where I waste more time trying to manually test it.

superasn 10y ago
You are absolutely correct, but I learned it the hard way. For solopreneurs the time is much better spent on marketing especially generating leads because it gives 1,000 times more return than time spent on writing tests and probably saving a few bugs later.