At some point I will (the story is pretty crazy) but for now I’d like to keep certain details of my life private, so I avoid blogging. I used to think I’d need a blog to attract consulting clients, but I’ve had no problem without one so far, and thus I haven’t gotten around to it. My personal website is basically Lorem Ipsum lol.
If you’re really interested, shoot me an email. I’m happy to talk one on one.
> Given that you've at minimum doubled the code (and doubled the bugs), it seems like a really bad long-term trade off.
I'd say you've at maximum doubled the code. The test ensures you write only what you need to get the test pass. Without them, devs get distracted and wander until the feature works. Usually distracting themselves with tons of YAGNI violations along the way. In my experience, untested code bases have a ton of unnecessary code.
I don't understand how it would double the bugs. The article has references saying it reduces them. But, even thinking about it, I don't see why you'd say that.
Maybe it's only difficult to test end-to-end? I would assume there's code in there that's algorithm-like. Give it these inputs, it should return these outputs. If so, it should be possible to isolate that code and test it.
But, I dunno, I haven't looked at the source code. It might be very difficult to maintain.
> Why does this matter? It matters for the exact same reason why memory leaks are bad in general: They consume more memory than necessary.
Thing is, this doesn't usually matter. I have never gotten an out of memory error from a leak in Java. Now compare that to all the development time I've saved by not having to deal with pointer arithmetic. I consider it a huge win. It's all about the type of apps you're making.
When I play Minecraft on my notebook, I first shut down all nonessential system services (I have a handy line in the shell history for that). This allows me to get around 45 minutes out of Minecraft (instead of 30 minutes) before it gets struck by the OOM killer.
Hmm, weird. I've never had Minecraft killed for OOM, since starting to play in the alpha days. In fact, I can watch the memory pool slowly grow, then a drop in framerate and increase in free memory when the GC is triggered every 30 seconds or so.
I don't do anything special to play; my sessions used to run into multiple hours, during my peak years of play.
I suspect that it's not fair to blame Java for whatever problem you were having, though.
I've used tons of programs that have problems and crash for various reasons. Is this an argument against the language? I don't think there'd be any left to use with this line of thinking.
Besides, there's too many variables in your anecdote. Is it a laptop from 1995? Is the OOM from a bug that could/should be fixed?
The notebook is from 2012 and has 4GB RAM. Minecraft stands out because most other programs of similar complexity (e.g. Portal 2) work fine.
I've heard a story that Minecraft's RAM consumption got a lot worse after Notch stepped down. The new developers refactored the code for OOP best practices (such as passing a 3D coordinate as an object rather than "int x, int y, int z"), which tremendously increased the number of allocations and thus GC pressure and memory usage. So it's fair IMO to blame this to a language. Having good practices lead to such consequences is terrible design.
Just because IntelliJ is using 2GB of RAM doesn't mean they have a memory leak. As long as that 2GB profile is stable, it isn't going to bring down the system.
> Place your test files next to the implementation.
Java background is probably biasing me, but I don't like this. It interferes with my ability to find code because the file list in every directory is twice as large.
If you are creating a separate directory for each "module" then it would just be one more file in each directory.
Component
- index.js
- Component.js
- component.scss
- Component.spec.js
This structure has worked really well for me, you have everything you need in a single directory so you don't have to jump around to another directory to find the test or styling or whatever.
Putting them together is AMAZING. So when I used to do Java development I thought the organization was great but every time I had to find a unit test I had to dig through a folder structure.
Then I tried GO. GO puts them together. I was amazed at how such a simple concept could keep my code so much better organized. I could immediately open both the code and the unit tests for said code. Just don't put a ton of files in any one directory (if you have a lot of files in a directory you're actively coding it I'd argue your file structure is not optimal).
Now when I do JavaScript development I have adopted 3 extensions:
- .aspec.js is for unit tests that should work in all environments
- .nspec.js is for unit tests that only work in node.js
- .cspec.js is for unit tests that only work on a client like a web browser
I think it probably depends on what your definition of "unit" is. As I stress functional units that encapsulate logic and data model but don't permute state, my units are probably significantly larger (and simpler) than those of people writing more imperative/traditional-OO units (where something under TDD may encapsulate many units due to mounting complexity/complication and so require further decomposition).
Right. In that, you still write all of the tests before the code. If you are objecting only to the rhetoric of "wall" of tests. That just depends on your size of units. Think of it more as hurdles of tests. :)
Everyone is interpreting this as, "write 10 tests then try to get them all to pass at once". That is not how you TDD. You write one, then get it to pass, then write another.
Maybe you mean, "write the test before the code", but when you say "write all tests before the code", it's not interpreted the same way.
> Software, as an industry, generally profits the most when it can identify an existing need that is currently solved without computers, and then make it 10x+ more efficient by applying computers. In this situation, the software doesn't need to be bug-free, it doesn't need to do everything, it just needs to work better than a human can.
Unfortunately, the project isn't "finished" after you achieve initial success. You have to maintain it for years after that. Without good tests, you get yourself into a state where one change breaks two things. You need teams of people manually checking it still works. It takes them an order of magnitude longer to check than it would take a computer. Your feedback loop that answers the question, "does it still work?" is in weeks instead of minutes.
You stop changing the bad code because it's too scary and dangerous. The bad code reduces the frequency at which you release new features. You slow to a crawl. The team of people testing gets expensive and eats into your profits. Some competitor eats your lunch.
In my experience, these problems occur earlier than you expect. Usually before you even attain success. I'm too lazy to comb over my app checking for bugs every time I develop a new feature. I get bored too easily to check that the same bug doesn't crop up over and over again. I'm also too impatient to wait for another person to do it. In these conditions, TDD speeds you up.
I've never worked on a manually tested project that avoided these problems. It usually happens around month 2 and gets even worse as time goes on.
Here's why I think TDD fails: The consultants say, "it's so easy! Just red-green-refactor!" No, it's extremely complex and difficult, actually. There's a ton of depth that nobody talks about because they're trying to get you to try it. The typical dev learns about "Just red-green-refactor" and fails. Now "TDD did not live up to expectations".
For example, did you know there's different styles of TDD? The author of this article doesn't seem to (I may be wrong, but he gives no indication). He's talking about Detroit style TDD (also known as classicist). This is the style Ron Jeffries, Uncle Bob, Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, etc. practice and advocate for. There's another style called London style (AKA mockist) that Gary Bernhardt, etc. practice. And then there's Discovery Testing from Justin Searls. There's probably others I haven't heard of yet.
They all have different pros and cons and a very common pitfall is to use a style in a way it's not really meant for. e.g., Using mockist to gain confidence your high level features work. Expecting classicist to help you drive out good design for your code.
To wrap this up, there's so much unknown unknowns about TDD it's usually premature to judge the technique. If you haven't tried all these styles, one might click with you. A lot of people are concluding they hate all sports when they've only tried baseball.
"Unfortunately, the project isn't "finished" after you achieve initial success."
It is if the goal was to sell the company and people bought it. After the success, the remaining problems are the buyer's while the money is going to the sellers. Is that a perverse incentive for quality or what? ;)
