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Thanks for the reply and for the article. I took your quote out of context. I'm not very interested in DHH's mis/understanding of TDD. I'm more interested in

by tieTYT 12y ago

Thanks for the reply and for the article. I took your quote out of context. I'm not very interested in DHH's mis/understanding of TDD. I'm more interested in my understanding of TDD. I'm trying to figure out if I'm doing TDD correctly or incorrectly when I isolate the database. Whether it's done through a mock or a fake or whatever is not that important to me. The thing I don't like about TDD is I never know if I'm doing it correctly. There's always that No True Scotsman fallacy^1 situation. "Oh, you tried TDD and it didn't work out for you? If you were doing real TDD it would have worked out." And I say this as a person who has watched three of Uncle Bob's videos on TDD that you have to pay for: http://cleancoders.com/episode/clean-code-episode-6-p1/show http://cleancoders.com/episode/clean-code-episode-6-p1/show http://cleancoders.com/episode/clean-code-episode-6-p2/show http://cleancoders.com/episode/clean-code-episode-6-p2/show http://cleancoders.com/episode/clean-code-episode-19-p1/show http://cleancoders.com/episode/clean-code-episode-19-p1/show Sorry for hijacking the topic. I've been trying TDD for years, and I never know if I'm doing it correctly. I saw this line and it made me question it yet again. ^1: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_Scotsman http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_Scotsman EDIT: Sorry, I commented as I read. Looks like you're going to explain it in the article.

gary_bernhardt 12y ago
My main response is that there's no "right" way to do TDD. There is a core definition, which is the red/green/refactor loop. New tests must fail; all tests must be green to refactor. Almost everything else is someone's interpretation. And, honestly, after enough time doing it you'll start taking careful shortcuts through the loop. (Am I allowed to say that in public? ;) Pairing in person with someone who's done it for a long time can help a lot, but even then you're getting someone's interpretation. If you worked with the DHH of three years ago, you'd get a very different interpretation (slower cycles, integration tests, no isolation) than if you worked with me (faster cycles, integration/unit mix, biased toward isolated unit tests). We were both doing TDD, though! (Given that he's said that he used to do TDD, I assume that he was following the core red/green/refactor loop.)

by tieTYT 12y ago

gary_bernhardt 12y ago

My main response is that there's no "right" way to do TDD. There is a core definition, which is the red/green/refactor loop. New tests must fail; all tests must be green to refactor. Almost everything else is someone's interpretation. And, honestly, after enough time doing it you'll start taking careful shortcuts through the loop. (Am I allowed to say that in public? ;) Pairing in person with someone who's done it for a long time can help a lot, but even then you're getting someone's interpretation. If you worked with the DHH of three years ago, you'd get a very different interpretation (slower cycles, integration tests, no isolation) than if you worked with me (faster cycles, integration/unit mix, biased toward isolated unit tests). We were both doing TDD, though! (Given that he's said that he used to do TDD, I assume that he was following the core red/green/refactor loop.)