Jason Gorman4d ago

I've been watching developers learn TDD for 25 years, and I have a reasonable ballpark on what it takes.

Roughly 1,000 red-green-refactor-commit cycles for the "rules" to become habits, and to scale the learning curve enough to make TDD work in practice on everyday code bases.

If you progress from regular practice (e.g., 2 hours a week) to TDD-ing on most of your code (10-15 hours a week, apparently), you're looking at 4-6 months.

And that, folks, is why "We tried TDD and it didn't work"

Show threadPointlessOne 4d ago

@jasongorman 4-6 months is quite an investment to just see if it works, isn’t it? I’d expect of any methodology to be able to answer that much faster. I mean, I’d expect there to be a long period of “it works but it’s hard” before it becomes a habit.

Let me give an example. Do you know anyone who invested 4-6 month into AI before they said it works/doesn’t work?

@floehopper

Show threadJason Gorman4d ago
@pointlessone @floehopper "AI" isn't a skill
Show threadJeff Grigg

@jasongorman @pointlessone @floehopper

And while "prompt engineering" may be a skill, it may also be a gambling addiction.

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/05/generative-ai-runs-on-gambling-addiction-just-one-more-prompt-bro/

Generative AI runs on gambling addiction — just one more prompt, bro!

You’ll have noticed how previously normal people start acting like addicts to their favourite generative AI and shout at you like you’re trying to take their cocaine away. Matthias Döpm…

Pivot to AI
Jun 14 at 1:01pmWeb