From: Eleanor McHugh <eleanor@...>
Date: 2008-08-16T22:54:28+09:00
Subject: Re: BDD and TDD - What are they for?

On 16 Aug 2008, at 12:51, David A. Black wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Aug 2008, Phlip wrote:
>> Clinton D. Judy wrote:
>>
>>> BDD looks like a way to make it easy for non-programmers to do
>>> programming, but not having people keep several functions in mind  
>>> at any
>>> one time. And it also does TDD? Am I close?
>>
>> Yes - BDD is TDD with an added layer: A "literate programming"  
>> framework that forces you to think in clear English* statements  
>> that your client could understand.
>
> I wouldn't call it literate programming in the Knuthian sense, though.
> Knuth says: "The practitioner of literate programming can be regarded
> as an essayist, whose main concern is with exposition and excellence
> of style."[1] It's a different undertaking from writing BDD
> specifications (even though of course it's nice if BDD specifications
> are reasonably well-written).

Many programmers believe they're bad at writing essays, and rather  
seeing an opportunity to improve their skills they would rather write  
tests. But tests are only as good as the analysis which goes into them  
and can very quickly become redundant when working on greenfield  
projects with very loose requirements. They're also as prone to error  
as any other code so beyond a certain level of complexity it's not  
entirely obvious that they improve code quality rather than hindering  
it.

That said, everyone seems to love them so they must have some value.


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason