TDD – Test-Driven-Development

Reduce Bugs in Production

The test-driven development approach aims to achieve high code quality. The creation of unit tests is intended to ensure from the start of development that the code does what is expected of it. If modifications to the code are implemented that affect the behavior of the code, good tests indicate this directly. The developer can then check whether this effect is desired or is an unwanted side effect.

The advantages of test-driven development are:

• Higher stability of the software
• Early identification and reduction of side effects/impacts
• Increase the testability of the code
• Documentation on how to use the function and what results it can return
• Easy possibility for pair programming and knowledge transfer

In my experience, test-driven development, if used correctly, helps to gain confidence in one’s own code base. The resulting high test coverage facilitates, for example, an upgrade of the framework version or updates of deployed libraries.