[jlkinsel]

I've become jaded with "top 5" style lists recently, but this one's pretty nice. I'm doing a few "secure development" training sessions with development teams in the next week, will be referencing this for sure.

I'm not sure writing tests makes you a better developer...gives you better habits, but not sure it results in your code being better, compared to things like fixing bugs in others code and learning a new language.

The learning a new language holds true past software development - when I learned Spanish in high school, my understanding of some of the stranger forms of English (say, past participle) improved.

[brandonsavage]

I have to disagree with one point: that writing tests doesn't make you a better developer. Here's why:

Writing a test requires you to think about your code in different ways than just creating it. TDD requires you to plan your code. And the more code you write, theoretically, the better your skills will be.

Now, will it make you the best developer? Probably not. I doubt writing tests is the most productive use of time. But for the practice of software development, writing tests is critical.