

The Lame Kind of TDD - chrishenn
http://writing.chrishenn.net/2012/03/10/TDD-the-lame-kind.html

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petercooper
_I could also just test it by looking at it in a browser. I would see a h1
with the text 'Big heading!' and have successfully verified the same thing as
the line above._

Except you _wouldn't_ repeat every single manual test every time you make a
material change to the code. And that means you'll miss cascade failures, one
of the biggest benefits of automated testing.

Michael is trying to instil good habits in newcomers to the Ruby and Rails
worlds, rather than show off perfectly chosen situations to evangelize TDD.
But, rest assured, if you go much deeper with Ruby or Rails, this habit will
start to reap huge dividends.

There's certainly an argument for not testing every minor piece of rendering
to occur in an app (like constantly checking for content on requested pages)
but that's really a different debate than to-TDD-or-not-to-TDD.

