Code correctness, and testing strategies

[Ben Finney]

Duncan Booth <duncan.booth at invalid.invalid> writes:

> I made the mistake at one point when I was trying to sell the
> concept of TDD telling the people I was trying to persuade that by
> writing the tests up front it influences the design of the code. I
> felt the room go cold: they said the customer has to sign off the
> design before we start coding, and once they've signed it off we
> can't change anything.

It's for misunderstandings like you describe here that I prefer (these
days) to use the term "behaviour driven development". The coding is
driven by desired new and/or altered behaviour of the application;
everything else follows from that statement of direction.

People, such as customers, who don't care about the term "unit test"
can easily relate to the term "behaviour". They are happy to talk
about how they want the application to behave, and are usually easy to
convince that such descriptions of behaviour are what should be the
driving force behind the implementation.

-- 
 \         "Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, |
  `\                  once we got as used to it."  -- Henry L. Mencken |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney