Advantages of the Test-driven Development Approach

There are several advantages of writing tests before we write the actual code. Let’s discuss a few of them.

Write clean code

Writing clean code should be one of our main goals when developing a software application. This is especially necessary if several developers collaborate on a piece of software. Following the several steps involved in TDD ultimately leads to very clean code. Clean code refers to code that’s easy to understand and easy to change. Therefore, the codebase is very manageable.

Ease of extending an existing software

Most software applications at some point need to be extended to add features, remove existing features, or fix bugs. Since there’s an underlying infrastructure where all previous functionality has automated tests, extending becomes easy. This is because there’s no fear of breaking an existing feature while adding new ones. Previous tests must pass before newly written code can be pushed to production. In addition, the codebase would most likely be well structured using the test-driven development approach.

Large software projects

Large software engineering projects with several moving parts can become complex to manage. The TDD approach helps. This is because in most cases, the codebase is broken down into several different components.

Catch bugs quickly

Bugs would most likely arise while adding a new feature to our application. This could happen due to programming mistakes. The TDD approach makes it very easy to catch bugs because the automated test would fail (assuming the tests are comprehensive). This would prompt the programmer to inspect the code before pushing it to production.

Write code systematically

A part of the ideology of the TDD approach is that we do one thing at a time. Therefore, things are done systematically, and we can easily track the progress of the application.

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In short, the TDD approach allows us to think about the project requirements before the actual code is written. We have to write the tests first, and they can’t be written without knowing which feature to add. This can be quite useful when a new startup wants to ship a minimum viable product (MVP).

Note: The benefits of the TDD approach might not pay off at the moment but at a later period of the application’s development process.