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> Come from a strongly tdd background Friend, we need to be damned careful about how we view others code when they don't have tests or embrace TDD. When we wo

> Come from a strongly tdd background Friend, we need to be damned careful about how we view others code when they don't have tests or embrace TDD. When we work with TDD or even a well tested codebase, we do benefit enormously. We also risk becoming evangelical, and that almost always comes across as condescending and off-putting. TDD Tests do not capture every possible point of faillure. There's clear use cases for things like Postman, Debugging Proxys, or OPs _debugging_ tool. PSA - avoid being a hype monger or evangelist of anything, it's about the worst way to support practices or tools you believe in. Trust me, I'm not only a practitioner of TDD but also a Lisp advocate and Emacs user... All these things are the best ever thing that happened /s No, the whole world won't ever be a place where everyone is "doing it right" by your estimation, or mine, or anyone else's. Quite the opposite, so settle in and mellow your jets.

latchkey 3y ago
good response. i'm not being evangelical by asking a question. i'm also not trying to start a sermon. my response was to explain where i was coming from because i was being called condescending. i don't care about doing it right. i can ask why someone would write a tool, instead of using one of the existing ones... or writing tests. my jets are plenty mellow.
- leptons 3y ago
  >no wonder we end up with such buggy junk software... people... write tests! absolutely condescending and holier than thou. I view TDD as a premature optimization when writing software that isn't simplistic or cut-and-dry CRUD. Trying to do something new doesn't always mean there's a known output before writing the actual code. Experimentation is a valid thing in software development and writing tests before writing the code would stifle some types of development. In a lot of cases it's bass-ackwards to write tests before the implementation is producing a useful result. I know this type of development might seem foreign to some, but you don't always know what you don't know before you start experimenting while writing code, and TDD doesn't really fit all types of development.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    > absolutely condescending and holier than thou. That was an update after I was downvoted. You're right, there are reasons to not always do TDD. Writing a tool to inspect websockets, isn't one of them.
    - kristiandupont 3y ago
      >Writing a tool to inspect websockets, isn't one of them. What kind of developer makes a blanket statement like that? There are all kinds of situations where debugging is more like detective work. When you discover the problem, then you have the knowledge necessaryto actually write the test that fails and which you can then make succeed.
      - latchkey 3y ago
        > What kind of developer makes a blanket statement like that? One with over 20 years of experience building software used by millions of people daily. You're trying to generalize a very specific conversation. OP was talking about building a tool to debug websockets. You don't need to debug websockets, you need to debug your code that is sending and receiving data _over_ websockets. In that case, you don't even need websockets at all. Meaning you don't need a tool to inspect the data either. Just make sure that your code is sending and receiving the correct data and you're done. Of course, if you want to build a tool, go ahead... that's your choice, but my question is still valid. Why not write tests?
        ShroudedNight 3y ago
        If people don't have the same positive relationship with tests that you do, I could easily see "writing tests" generate enough negative sentiment to seriously degrade a person's capacity engage the near whimsical part of the brain that allows one to think laterally at non-trivial 'distance' from the obvious problem. It could easily be as simple as writing tools is more inspiring / engaging to the OP than writing tests.

latchkey 3y ago

good response. i'm not being evangelical by asking a question. i'm also not trying to start a sermon. my response was to explain where i was coming from because i was being called condescending. i don't care about doing it right. i can ask why someone would write a tool, instead of using one of the existing ones... or writing tests. my jets are plenty mellow.

leptons 3y ago
>no wonder we end up with such buggy junk software... people... write tests! absolutely condescending and holier than thou. I view TDD as a premature optimization when writing software that isn't simplistic or cut-and-dry CRUD. Trying to do something new doesn't always mean there's a known output before writing the actual code. Experimentation is a valid thing in software development and writing tests before writing the code would stifle some types of development. In a lot of cases it's bass-ackwards to write tests before the implementation is producing a useful result. I know this type of development might seem foreign to some, but you don't always know what you don't know before you start experimenting while writing code, and TDD doesn't really fit all types of development.
- latchkey 3y ago
  > absolutely condescending and holier than thou. That was an update after I was downvoted. You're right, there are reasons to not always do TDD. Writing a tool to inspect websockets, isn't one of them.
  - kristiandupont 3y ago
    >Writing a tool to inspect websockets, isn't one of them. What kind of developer makes a blanket statement like that? There are all kinds of situations where debugging is more like detective work. When you discover the problem, then you have the knowledge necessaryto actually write the test that fails and which you can then make succeed.
    - latchkey 3y ago
      > What kind of developer makes a blanket statement like that? One with over 20 years of experience building software used by millions of people daily. You're trying to generalize a very specific conversation. OP was talking about building a tool to debug websockets. You don't need to debug websockets, you need to debug your code that is sending and receiving data _over_ websockets. In that case, you don't even need websockets at all. Meaning you don't need a tool to inspect the data either. Just make sure that your code is sending and receiving the correct data and you're done. Of course, if you want to build a tool, go ahead... that's your choice, but my question is still valid. Why not write tests?
      - ShroudedNight 3y ago
        If people don't have the same positive relationship with tests that you do, I could easily see "writing tests" generate enough negative sentiment to seriously degrade a person's capacity engage the near whimsical part of the brain that allows one to think laterally at non-trivial 'distance' from the obvious problem. It could easily be as simple as writing tools is more inspiring / engaging to the OP than writing tests.