On: Unit testing is not (generally) useful

[biohacker42]

When (or should I say if) JustinTV grows much bigger and hires a lot more programmers this whole unit tests are not useful thing will come back to bite them.

But I can see how right now it seems their time is better spent on other things.

[abstractbill → biohacker42]

Out of interest, are you speaking from personal experience?

[biohacker42 → abstractbill]

Yep, I got TDD religion when I started working for a huge company.

I did some testing, but not much when I worked for a startup.

[axod → biohacker42]

For a huge company, I'd say TDD/pair programming etc is also to ensure some productivity from bad programmers.

If one bad programmer writes the unit tests, and another bad programmer writes the code, then you might end up with a mediocre outcome, instead of a bad outcome. Same with pair programming.

Likewise, if you get a good programmer to write the unit tests, then give the programming work to a terrible programmer, given enough time, he'll write a working solution.

[biohacker42 → axod]

I'd have to say that two bad programmers are not any better then one bad programmer even with TDD.

But TDD benefits even the best programmers when they are dealing with a huge, ugly, old code base.

When on the other hand you're user testing every day or multiple times a day, like you might with a web startup, then TDD may only slow you down.

[abstractbill → biohacker42]

When on the other hand you're user testing every day or multiple times a day, like you might with a web startup, then TDD may only slow you down.

These days I'm at a point where I can usually push 4 or 5 new releases into production every day. It's pretty awesome :-)