[qayxc]

> it just doesn't make sense to me that anyone else would _want_ to be doing TDD or other similar methodologies. It's _so_ much more effort to do tests before code.

This statement only makes sense if you can provide figures comparing the costs of defects with the overhead of (A)TDD/BDD.

I'm not disagreeing, I'd just be genuinely interested in the true cost of forgoing TDD/BDD versus TDD/BDD. Unfortunately this would require rigorous documentation of the product lifecycle including number of defects, time to fix, losses due to defects, etc. I'm not sure there's a lot of reliable data available, though.

[owalt]

True, that's a good point and I pretty much agree with you entirely. I didn't really make a distinction between argument and anecdote. Basically I think it's being glossed over that there is a blatant up-front cost to testing. Write the tests first and you guarantee that you eat this cost. An argument can then be had as to whether the upsides are worth it or not.

I would love to see data on this, but to my knowledge there is none. (And it's unclear how to even design such an experiment/study to get meaningful results.) The statement I made that it's a lot of effort to do testing before code is of course pure anecdote. But that goes both ways - so are the claims in the original article as far as I can tell.