I run a semi-regular development architecture meeting that involves pretty much all of my company’s senior java developers. On the agenda today was how to drive TDD into the development group successfully. Though not unexpected I got lots of the following:
- Well, if you want us to write lots of unit tests it’s going to take a lot longer.
- I’m really not sold on testing. I’m an old school developer, you’ll really have to convince me.
- We should buy the developers a unit testing book and expect them to read it, no that probably won’t work.
- I hate writing tests first because you’re just going to change the code and then you have to change the tests, it’s just a lot of grunt work.
The end result is right now out of the 6 senior developers in the room, only one of them has become test infected, and he can often fall back into bad habits given some time pressure. I just hope the presentations, seminars, and pair programming I’m about to embark on is successful.