[ayberkt]

> Let me emphasize: you write the test cases for your program, and then you write your program. You are writing code to test something that doesn't even exist yet. I am not rightly able to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a method.

I don't understand this. What is so absurd about specifying facts about the program you will write? When we have tools that can prove facts, we will be doing formal specifications instead of random sampling. But still, testing is a way of statistically specifying facts about your program, for which it seems sensible to be written before the program.

[mojuba]

Because like the author says, there is no substitute for competence. If you can't write good code, then your assumptions about the future design will be wrong and/or bad, and your tests will be as poorly written. In other words, TDD (anecdotally) doesn't improve your code but only introduces extra levels of complexity. Which in the hands of an incompetent developer becomes an even bigger problem than if there was no TDD.

[veidr]

If you can't write good code, then you will not write good code.

But, there is another common case where unit tests (written before or after) also come in tremendously handy: if you can't write good mistake-free code 100% of the time.

Which describes all programmers who have ever existed.

[marcosdumay]

> What is so absurd about specifying facts about the program you will write?

Not really absurd, just impractical. It's because all those facts are wrong, and you don't know yet why.