Friday finking: TDD and EAFP

[boB Stepp]

On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 12:42 AM DL Neil via Python-list
<python-list at python.org> wrote:
>
> Is the practice of TDD fundamentally, if not philosophically, somewhat
> contrary to Python's EAFP approach?
>

[...]

>
> In encouraging my mind to think about testing the code, I find myself
> searching for edge-cases, and attempting to anticipate the unusual.
> Accordingly to the gospel of TDD: so far, so good.
>
> The 'problem' is, that it puts my mind onto LBYL-rails before the
> Python-coding train (of thought) has even left the station. It then
> seems natural to start putting a bunch of if-then-else's up-front and
> before the 'main line' of code.
>
> Does TDD bend your mind in this (apparently) non-Pythonic fashion?
> Have you developed an answer?
> (other than: "@dn is 'nuts'*", which is not worthy of debate)

As the pros have yet to chime in, I will attempt to add my amateurish
thoughts.  In my on again/off again efforts to self-study Python,
sound software construction practices, etc., I have been endeavoring
to adopt a TDD approach.  I find that trying to do this forces upon me
more clarity of thought which (hopefully) results in more expressive,
simpler and understandable code.  As I often find my initial efforts
at writing tests murky and hard to understand, I (eventually) realize
that the associated code I'm trying to test, which seemed so clear
when I first wrote it, is hard to test.  So I refactor/simplify the
code, it becomes easier to write sensible test code, etc.  It may just
be me and my lack of experience, but I find this circular process
ultimately leads to more Pythonic results -- easier to understand code
that (I hope) others can easily read and understand.

Though I am sure I am stating the obvious, instead of just thinking
about edge cases, I like to have at least one test that proves that
what I normally expect to get is, in fact, gotten.  I often
embarrassingly find myself caught in some sort of simple logic error
that this type of test will catch, especially later if I am
refactoring my code in the direction I am trying to coerce it to go
for the end product.

I am probably far from thinking/coding in a proper Pythonic fashion,
but the TDD back-and-forth process seems to get me closer to being
Pythonic.

-- 
boB