I love this comment from Martin Odersky, from the image shown, which comes from this link:
“Initially, things were too fluid to invest in tests. I simply did not know whether the design would hold up, had to fit a lot of pieces together first. But now is a good time to put these tests in place.”
So often people talk about “Test First Development” that I think they’re insane, or just regurgitating marketing-speak to sound good. There are times when you’re coding things like SARAH where you don’t know how things are going to shake out that “Test First” just doesn’t make sense. If you know what you’re getting into when you’re coding, Test First sounds good, but when you’re exploring, “Oh, this is how SARAH should work”, or, “I thought an FTP server worked like this but it works like that”, Test First doesn’t make sense. (Once you understand the domain, giddyup, test your heart out.)
