The Little Shop of TDD Horrors
summary
Identifies concrete “testing smells” and shows fixes with real JavaScript Swift and Android examples including how to shrink setup and avoid over-mocking, how to prefer behavior/BDD over fragile unit checks, and when end-to-end tests actually add value; demonstrates tooling patterns like randomized case runners and advises mock only the minimal shape, avoid testing private functions, and timebox cycles to 30-minute iterations — backed by surprising empirical pain: a flaky suite once takes 26 minutes to run and is shown to be fixed by narrowing scope and better mocks.
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chapters (16)
- 0:00Introduction
- 3:12What is TDD
- 6:05Setup and teardown
- 9:58TDD and code quality
- 13:41Time-boxing tests
- 15:30Testing private functions
- 18:27Readability in tests
- 21:03Network responses and APIs
- 24:17Behavior-Driven Development basics
- 26:49Tests and requirements
- 30:50End-to-end pitfalls
- 33:22Profitability of testing
- 35:58Pair programming
- 37:06Quality metrics
- 39:04TDD time estimates
- 40:44Q&A
