The Hard Way Is Better For Us
cdsmith has a good post on TDD specifically and any software technique/process where he discusses the tendency for some to convince themselves and others that a particularly popular technique/process is worth the effort (even though it may not be) by changing company policy to indicate they should have been doing things the hard way all along. That is, find a TLA (a three letter acronym) you like and change your environment so that the TLA makes sense even if that means it takes more effort because your environment truly doesn’t quite fit the TLA.
To quote cdsmith:
To be clear, I’m not saying TDD is a bad idea. I’m saying that competent software developers ought to make rational choices, by considering the advantages and disadvantages of things for a particular purpose. This is directly opposed to the idea that we ought to stack the deck by defining away the disadvantages and pretending they are good design that we just didn’t recognize until now.
What a great quote. Just for emphasis, I’m going to point out the particularly pliant sentence in that paragraph.
I’m saying that competent software developers ought to make rational choices, by considering the advantages and disadvantages of things for a particular purpose.
Ahhh…. rational thinking….