I still practice TDD though. When I started working on a binary tree space-partitioning algorithm a while ago for my talk at Pycon 2014 I started just writing code and spent a precious couple of nights banging my head against the wall because it was always off and would come up with intermittent errors. I had figured that I knew the data-structure and algorithm well enough and this is one-off code so who cares? So when I was desperate I had told a couple of good friends about my problem and they reminded me: I hadn't written the tests figuring that I'd save myself the time.
TDD has just been a part of my process for years now that I don't think I can even write good code without it. Even in statically type-checked languages. The practice forces me to specify the contracts and behaviors of each piece of my code before I write a single line to implement it. That loop of test, write, pass/fail offloads a tonne of complexity from my mind. It also helps me to discover where my assumptions were wrong in the design process when I notice some tests require too many mocks/stubs/assumptions about state or are simply brittle. Along with a keeping a rigorous development journal it's one of the most powerful tools in my arsenal.
I still practice TDD though. When I started working on a binary tree space-partitioning algorithm a while ago for my talk at Pycon 2014 I started just writing code and spent a precious couple of nights banging my head against the wall because it was always off and would come up with intermittent errors. I had figured that I knew the data-structure and algorithm well enough and this is one-off code so who cares? So when I was desperate I had told a couple of good friends about my problem and they reminded me: I hadn't written the tests figuring that I'd save myself the time.
TDD has just been a part of my process for years now that I don't think I can even write good code without it. Even in statically type-checked languages. The practice forces me to specify the contracts and behaviors of each piece of my code before I write a single line to implement it. That loop of test, write, pass/fail offloads a tonne of complexity from my mind. It also helps me to discover where my assumptions were wrong in the design process when I notice some tests require too many mocks/stubs/assumptions about state or are simply brittle. Along with a keeping a rigorous development journal it's one of the most powerful tools in my arsenal.