TDD Development

TDD (Test Driven Development) is an development approach which create the test cases before coding directly. The purpose of the test case is to make sure what we coded are fulfilling the specifications. These test cases could be automated and re-run them without much effort. Hence, we could re-run whole test cases again to make sure the result is same for the coded unit. It could provide better quality for the application and developer could have confidence for their coding because of the test cases re-run.

In order to explain more clearly, let's take login function as an example we have three cases for this function, login success, login fail and duplicate login. With the TDD approach, we could build up all these test cases and assume this login function as the black box. Once test cases ready, build the login function and run these test cases to verify the output from the login function. This approach also gains another benefit for the further development. Because we may revise our login logic later (e.g. Password encryption and checking approach changed), we still could re-run these cases to confirm the changes won't after the outcome.

Actually, HomeBloc is trying to use as much as possible (As much as possible because we still skip some very simple test) of TDD approach, but sometimes these benefits are not obvious. Because the difference of the effort between the automated testing and manual testing is not apparent, especially during earlier stage. But once you built a complicated applications with a lot of functions, it should be very convenience that we have the automated test. We only need several clicks for the testing and know the result instantly.

BTW, someone may think that this approach is not worth since it needs some overhead to setup. And it is also not necessary to use such rigid approach to capture the bugs which may not occur. If you have any opinions on TDD, please feel free to share.