Perspective on Test Driven Development as a Junior Developer
February 3, 2017
I am a junior level developer just trying to learn everything I could get my hands on. I have been coding on rails for like 7 months now. I have had some experience with test driven development, and I find it quite hard topic to grasp on. As a junior level developer, I have always wondered is it worth to write tests, so here I am trying to answer the same question to those junior level developer who is wondering what exactly is Test Driven Development.
What is Test Driven Development?
Before talking about Test Driven Development first let us talk about test, here test means software testing. So what exactly is software testing? Talking about the definition software testing is quoted as “The process of checking whether a system is solving the intendant problem without any bugs”. In general finding out bugs before the production of the system is called testing.
So Test Driven Development is a process of writing tests even before writing the main production code after writing tests programmer writes the main production code passing all those tests. This cycle is repeated many times which helps programmer write scalable and quality code. Test Driven Development not only helps in maintaining error free code but also helps to re-factor code in a DRY format.
My Prospective:
As I am a junior level developer It was really hard at first to grasp the concept of Test Driven Development. I was thinking why do we need to write an extra line of code which are not even included in the main production code or which does not play any role in the production. After forcing myself towards Test Driven Development I was able to understand its concept making me realize the roles of tests.
During the development phase of any system we as a developer add many lines of code daily, and also have to work on a group so there are much more lines of code added than on the starting of the day. As every developer has their own style of writing code it is really hard to predict whose code might break down which part of the system. Test Driven Development comes handy on this situation all those extra hours of code finally pays off letting us know if there is an error on the system as the code does not respond as defined on the tests finally failing the tests.
So what do you think about Test Driven Development? I Encourage all fellow junior level developer to try learning TDD. I love TDD and I am confident enough to tell you that you will also love TDD approach.
