TDD is meant for supposedly helping with design. It does help, well sort of - it helps in writing code that is more testable. That's a plus, since the more you

TDD is meant for supposedly helping with design. It does help, well sort of - it helps in writing code that is more testable. That's a plus, since the more you wait to introduce testing in your project, the harder it gets to do so. But you can't rely on it for the actual problem solving. Here's the proof: http://devgrind.com/2007/04/25/how-to-not-solve-a-sudoku/ http://devgrind.com/2007/04/25/how-to-not-solve-a-sudoku/ I've watched Rich Hickey's talks and he makes fun of TDD as a design tool. And that's it. This doesn't negate the value of automated testing in general. Testing helps to ensure that the primary use-cases of your software system are fulfilled and to guard against regressions. When you get a bug, you write a test for it. When you forget about a business rule and find out you broke it later, you write a test for it. When you refactor code, it's very useful to have a suite of tests that ensure at least the main business logic still works. TDD on the other hand is something different. Writing the test case first, before writing the code that passes it, always seemed like a dumb idea to me. So I always write my tests after and I'm not crazy about good code coverage either. But you do need tests for non-toy projects.