[computerdork]

Hmm, saying tests are just a hint seems to be under appreciating their significance. Yes, they do have bugs of their own, but as you said they are a measurement. Having them statistically reduces the chances of bugs reaching production. They don't remove them completely of course, but they do greatly decrease the rate of bugs (and have read the same thing, formal verification of the code is typically not worth the time and cost).

And just looked up TDD on wikipedia. Actually, the standard process is not to write all the tests first, then do the implementation. It's to do what a lot of devs already do, write some tests based on your requirements. Then, write the implementation for these tests. Then repeat, adding in more test for other paths through the system.

Didn't know this myself about TDD (I thought it was focus writing all the tests, then do the implementation). Yeah, TDD is actually a very practical approach and something I pretty much do in my own development. Instead of using a driver program to run your working code, just write unit tests to run it. And keep building your unit tests for every new feature or execution path you're working on. You'll miss a lot of them early on, but you fill out the rest at the end.

Now that I know, in my opinion, TDD was pretty amazing and changed our industry.