Átila on Code

TDD isn’t for everyone. People work in different ways and their brains even more so, and I think I agree with Bertrand Meyer in that whether you write the test first or last, the important thing is that the test gets written. Even for those of us for whom TDD works, it’s not always applicable. It takes experience to know when or not to do it. For me, whenever I’m not sure of exactly I want to do and am doing exploratory work, I reach for a REPL when I can and don’t even think of writing tests. Even then, by the time I’ve figured out what to do I usually write tests straight afterwards. But that’s me.

However, when fixing bugs I think “TDD” (there’s not any design going on, really) should be almost mandatory. Almost, because I thought of a way that works that doesn’t need the test to be written first, but it’s more cumbersome. More on that later.

Tests are code. Code is buggy. Ergo… tests will contain bugs. So can we trust our tests? Yes, and especially so if we’re careful. First of all, tests are usually a lot smaller than the code they test (they should be!). Less code means fewer bugs on average. If that doesn’t give you a sense of security, it shouldn’t. The important thing is making sure that it’s very difficult to introduce simultaneous bugs in the test and production code that cancel each other out. Unless the tests are tightly coupled with the production code, that comes essentially for free.

Writing the test to reproduce a bug is important because we get to see it go from red to green, which is what gives us confidence. I’ve lost count of how many fake greens I’ve had due to tests that weren’t part of the suite, code that wasn’t even compiled, bugs in the test code, and many other reasons. Making it fail is important. Making changes in a different codebase (the production code) and then the test passing means we’ve actually done something. If at any point things don’t work as they should (red -> green) then we’ve made a mistake somewhere. The fix is wrong, the test is buggy, or our understanding of the problem and what causes it might be completely off.

Reproducing the bug accurately also means that we don’t start with the wrong foot. You might think you know what’s causing the bug, but what better way than to write a failing test? Now, it’s true that one can fix the bug first, write the test later and use the VCS to go back in time and do the red/green dance. But to me that sounds like a lot more work.

Whether you write tests before of after the production code, make sure that at least one test fails without the bugfix. Even if by just changing a number in the production code. I get very suspicious when the test suite is green for a while. Nobody writes correct code that often. I know I don’t.