>I've brought this up before, but “literature” carries the connotation of “scientific literature”
to you. That connotation didn't even cross my mind. Regardless. Are you going to wait until there is a peer-reviewed scientific paper telling you TDD is good before you'll believe it? Do you have personal experience that TDD seems to make your designs better? If so, is that less true to you because we haven't scientifically "proven" it?
The trend "Jabberwocky" comes at a very considerable startup cost, a significant learning curve, and a negative impact productivity (at least during the early days). In return for strict adherence to its philosophy, it promises to possibly help you create a better designed and more reliable system over the long run. Some cool cats are using Jabberwocky, many more denounce it. Some studies claim it's at least not harmful, others say it's a bureaucratic add-on.
Meanwhile, you mostly deal with small, simple, or short-lived systems and have little expectation in building skyscraper enterprise apps, so the promised benefits fall in the "oh that's nice" bucket. Or perhaps you lead a team that is deeply invested in a three-year codebase not using Jabberwocky, and the cost of getting everyone to switch has a serious financial implication.
The stance of "Jabberwocky sounds nice enough, but I do wonder if anyone systematically proved it is worthwhile" is a perfectly valid position. It is not about what you should do, it is about what you can do, and you can't just follow every trend (also see: Agile+XP) or even trial every alternative. For many non-engineering firms, there is "real work" to be done, and the never-ending increasingly expensive pursuit of operational excellence can be a hard thing to sell internally.
This is a huge benefit of science of the rest of us - a few million people can experiment on the edge of what is known, most of them will get nowhere, but a few thousand will determine that "X448YAB" tends to be superior to "X28YNB". Over time, the rest 7 Billion of us will slowly migrate to the more effective way of doing things and everyone benefits. We cannot denounce someone for not using stuff from the cutting edge until that thing is proven effective.
It is indeed less true, until the possibility that we could be committing a type I error can be ruled out.
It may be that TDD has little negative effect upon development and results in a FeelGood™ response that could be present within any project with non-zero productivity.
to you. That connotation didn't even cross my mind. Regardless. Are you going to wait until there is a peer-reviewed scientific paper telling you TDD is good before you'll believe it? Do you have personal experience that TDD seems to make your designs better? If so, is that less true to you because we haven't scientifically "proven" it?