Note: this IT radio drama starts with episode 14, Why Devs don’t TDD. Start listening there. 

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​017 The Architect Disses TDD

Narrator: Vanilla Pop has had some personal breakthroughs with using TDD and has checked in his code. The problem is, not everyone he needs to work with understand what he’s trying to do.

 

(A knock. Architect says “enter”. Door closes)

Architect: I called you to my office to discuss your project.

 

VPop: Yeah?. Is something wrong?

 

Architect: I was reviewing the code you checked in and I have some concerns. Do you have a project number for these code changes?

 

VPop: Yeah. of course I do. It’s written in the checkin comments.

 

Architect: But… you made code changes here and here, and here and here.

Oh! And what have we here? Some new files: AggregationTest, LoggerTest, and RaterTest. Nice! You’re adding test automation. I like that, but come on. The functionality for project 555439 is really only in Rater. Did you read this comment block? Wow. Such a beautiful comment block! It expresses in natural language what the code does.

 

Pop: Sure enough. But—

 

Architect: You only needed to change one file, but you changed three and added three tests. Mind you, I’m not complaining about the tests. But changing this other code…

Pop: yeah well—

Architect:More changes mean more bugs after all. I mean why change Logger.

 

Pop: When Rater executes, it uses Logger, and logger opens network connections and you know what? That slows down my microtests by about a million percent.

Architect: seriously?

 

Pop: I’m not kidding. Normally the logger talks to a service. So it waits f