GWT Blog – GlobalWorldTech

The use of Test Driven Development (TDD) has been receiving much acclaim over the past years, and there is good reason why.

The value of Test Driven Development (TDD) in software development continues to prove itself worthy as time goes by. There have been actual studies reporting that TDD often results to greater productivity, since it results more tests written.

Although there is yet to be a method to ultimately test this claim in terms of the quality of the code, the possibilities that TDD can bring to the table are indeed promising.

New projects, called "greenfield" projects, are often worked on without the use of certain debuggers since the use of TDD alone proves enough.

If the Test Driven Development (TDD) is used together with a version control system, reverting a code to a previous version (if it passed all tests then) in the case of a failed test, is generally easier and far productive in comparison with the use of a debugger.

TDD provides a method that is more than a validation of a program's correctness. Other than this, it also contributes a huge chunk in the design of the program.

Test Driven Development (TDD) focuses first on the test cases, which gives the program a view of how the user will experience the functionality of the interface. This is beneficial for most programs.

In complement to "Design by Contact", TDD works on the test cases to program codes instead of going through plain mathematical preconceptions and/or assertions.

TDD gives the programmers the capability to make use of smaller steps whenever the need arises. This means that the programmers can concentrate on the current task, in a way that the task becomes the "goal" before he can move on and make the test pass.

At an early stage, the programmer does not focus too much on handling of errors and special or complicated cases. The tests that deal with these issues are applied separately.

Test Driven Development (TDD) makes sure that this flow of work allows all of the written code to be covered by one test, at least.

As a result, more confidence in the code of the program is achieved, not only by the team, but by the future users as well. Aside from this, the total implementation length (time) of the codes in TDD is generally shorter than in other methodologies.

In conclusion, Test Driven Development (TDD) is a way to produce better codes in terms of flexibility extensibility, and modularity – all because the method requires its programmers to put themselves in a perspective that places them to focus more on the smaller units that could be written individually (which will be put together in a later stage) rather than viewing the program as a whole.

This results in a clean interface, a loose coupling, and a smoother operation flow. In TDD, the use of the design patterns of the "mock object" backs up the entire modularization of the program code.

This way, there is easier switching to and from in between modules, allowing for better testing of particular units and of the actual version of the program.