[seanwilson]

> The gist is that I don't really have a blueprint on paper, it's all in my head, the blueprint comes together when I glue everything together.

TDD doesn't work well at all when you're not sure what you're building yet because having to constantly refactor your tests eats up time. You might be better writing a quick and dirty prototype first and then trying TDD.

> I've not found a case where writing tests actually helped with writing the program. For me, it's been a hindering process. Am I doing something wrong here?

For what it's worth, when I was taught TDD I found TDD proponents very frustrating to talk to when I wanted an honest evaluation of the pros and cons. Several would refuse to admit any downsides to TDD and instead push back that you just weren't getting it yet. There's no silver bullet.