Re: TDD: Test-Driven Design or Test-Driven Development?

From: news2.news.adelphia.net (Jeff.Langr_at_LangrSoft.com)
Date: 01/15/04 

Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 06:09:40 GMT

"Universe" <universe@c.o.v.a.d.net> wrote in message
news:99335$40024574$42a7eb1c$30680@msgid.meganewsservers.com...
> XP and XP followers fail to understand:
> ~ the need to methodically apply the scientific method and approach
> to knowledge; XP lacks the understanding that we must consistently and
> all-sided apply the an objectively correct approach to gaining
> accurate knowledge most rapidly - the scientific method

Here's what I thought "the scientific method" was. Correct me if I'm wrong.

1. observe an aspect of the "universe" (note the lowercase u)
2. invent a theory consistent with your observation
3. use your theory to make predictions
4. test the predictions through experiments/further observation
5. modify the theory based on feedback from your results
6. go back to step 3

Looks like short cycles based on feedback from lots of testing to me. Step
1, I suppose, suggests that there's no reason practitioners of TDD can't
incorporate their body of knowledge, from wherever it comes, into the system
design via the tests. Are you suggesting otherwise, that those doing TDD are
always blindly coding whatever first comes to their feeble mind?

The opposite idea--constructing a "holistic" design with little or no
feedback cycles, presuming it is correct, and blowing lots of time
implementing what is in all likelihood a less than optimal design, seems to
be anethema to "the" scientific method.

Jeff L.

"Scientific Method?" blah blah blah
http://www.dharma-haven.org/science/myth-of-scientific-method.htm

"The scientist has no other method than doing his damnedest."
-- P.W. Bridgman

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