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TDD doesn't think for you, it merely validates your own existing understanding/mental model and forces you to come up with it upfront. This is hardly a thing to be mistrustful about, unless you work with idiots.



You are right about that, but having code that passes a given test suite doesn't say anything about its secondary qualities, such as whether it can be understood. In theory, a failing test could improve your understanding of the situation, allowing you to refactor your initial pass at a solution, but I would bet that on this particular code base, the comprehension-raising doesn't go far enough, in most cases, for this to be feasible.


That seems orthogonal to testing though. Implementation code can be hard to understand with or without a test suite, at least with test, as you point out, you may be able to understand the behaviour at some higher abstraction.


ok but from reading a lot of the comments on HN it sounds like many posters here think that they do work with idiots.


Those idiots probably also think the same, though.


If everyone’s an idiot tbinking they’re surrounded by idiots, then TDD has no hope to ever succeed !


Touché!


> TDD doesn't think for you

I totally agree, but I met several programmers who think the opposite.




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