After the LIDNUG presentation, we stayed online to discuss unit testing experiences. A couple of things stayed with me from that talk. One: we’re (we developers) are obsessed with tooling and technology (you didn’t expect hard news here, right?). Our main focus should be about solving the business problem first. But, us geeks, we like to know more about the how, rather than the why.

The second is that Microsoft, by providing better and better VS experience,  and a couple of great technologies, created less and less gifted programmers, and more professional debuggers. And I mean the people, not the tools.

Microsoft is not the only culprit (hey, it’s true around the software world). With our obsession for tools and technology (which MS provided), we needed better tools for getting ourselves out of more and more messes. So MS obliged, and gave us better debuggers, and for that we became proficient at excavating software problems.  

If we chose the road less travelled, we would be working on eliminating bugs before they happen. This of course falls under the jurisdiction of better programming.

So the next time someone asks: why isn’t TDD catching on? You can blame Microsoft, or their tools, or the software industry in general. Tell’em I said so.

What can you do? Now, that’s your responsibility and what makes you a professional. 

Think about your code before you write it. Make sure it works. Review it. Think about where the bugs can hide, and leave traps for them, to catch them when they rear their ugly head.

Program better.

Gil Zilberfeld