TDD killing my joy of Rails

Taylor,

I hear ya… Writing tests can be a major pain in the butt. I don’t know if it’s possible to truly enjoy it, but it can really make a big difference in the long run. You can actually think of it as just another type of Don’t Repeat Yourself, in that you’re putting in some extra work at the front end in order to save yourself from having to test and re-test stuff manually as your app grows and evolves.

If you write your tests well (and this is probably the hardest part, IMHO), they can immediately alert you to problems you create as you go along, and bugs that get introduced as you change functionality. My worst enemy are always the unintended side effects of a modification… With well written tests, there is much less chance that this will be a problem.

And as I’m spending my day today writing a bunch of tests, I’m preaching to myself a bit too :wink:

Good luck,

Matt