Comments by "Scott Franco" (@scottfranco1962) on "TDD Is A BROKEN Practice" video.

  1. To me the prime example is a compiler, one of which I happen to be working on at the moment. If your compiler does not work, you are seriously scr*wed. Everyone knows this. Thus compilers simply work, and are reliable most of the time. If they are not they die quickly, since nobody uses them. Thus the question becomes, compilers are a large and complex codebase. If we can get those right, why can't other programs be proven correct as well? The answer is that compiler developers simply take it as a given that the testing code for the compiler will be %50 of the total work to develop the compiler as the other half, developing the main compiler code. So this means that for most programs, its not worth it to spend that kind of effort to prove the program is accurate no? There in lies the paradox. A typical program takes %50 of the total development time or more in debugging. Even very optimistic programmers will admit to that. By that same logic, saying you want to write the program, then do the work to debug it into shape means you prefer to fix the program AFTER the fact than BEFORE the fact, which is the net argument against TDD. In a word, you can pay now, or pay later.
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