First published September 2008. It’s interesting given the recent TDD Religious Wars. I’m taking a nuanced position here & also being emotionally vulnerable, 2 properties I find increasingly rare out there in Xitter-land. Also, it reminds me that I have been searching for a principles-aligned sustainable business model for a long old time.
> Reflecting on my emotional state while I was stuck I can see clearly now that a big part of my problem was that I was afraid of the answer I would receive upon getting something done. What if, after seven years of struggle with trying to create a JUnit business, I finally had the best JUnit business idea I’d ever have and it still wasn’t good enough?
My assumption when reading the text leading up to this was that your fear would be "what if tdd doesn't really work?” Do you think that made it doubly painful, or is that not a point of prestige for you? I'm thinking it should be; you're a genius for formulating tdd 🙂
> My fear in writing this is that folks will take this as an excuse not to skip the hard practices in XP
Is there a typo here? "not to skip" -> "to skip"?
Pairs well with self discipline to go back and get things tested if we discover it's worthwhile.
I believe Dan North called this the "Spike and Stabilize" method.
> Reflecting on my emotional state while I was stuck I can see clearly now that a big part of my problem was that I was afraid of the answer I would receive upon getting something done. What if, after seven years of struggle with trying to create a JUnit business, I finally had the best JUnit business idea I’d ever have and it still wasn’t good enough?
My assumption when reading the text leading up to this was that your fear would be "what if tdd doesn't really work?” Do you think that made it doubly painful, or is that not a point of prestige for you? I'm thinking it should be; you're a genius for formulating tdd 🙂
Can we consider this as an example of the heuristic "Tidy never, when there's nothing to learn by improving the design." ?
Yes. I wanted to know whether I could get the function to work. I got my answer.