Test-driven development as a testing technique

TDD practitioners sometimes like to say that TDD is not about testing; rather, it’s about design, behavior, or specification, and the automated tests we have at the end are simply a bonus.

Yes, TDD is about design, but TDD is certainly about testing, too. TDD practitioners care that their software has a high level of quality, and this is the same thing that testers care about.

Sometimes, people question the naming of TDD because they feel that the notion of a “test” confuses the actual process. The reason for this is that developers misunderstand what it means to build a “test.” A typical unit testing tool offers you practically no guidance on how to write good tests. And it turns out that reframing tests as specifications and examples is a good way to introduce testing to developers.

All automated tests are hard to write. Sometimes, we forget to write important tests, or we build brittle tests...