Why (I Think) Developers Won't Test

Once our new podcast “People AND Tech” (finally!) -word inserted to convey frustration with the speed!:)- is out, you’ll hear Dave (Ballantyne - VP of Engineering at Evora Global, my husband and my co-host) and I discuss this theme that Bryan Finster instigated with this observation:

While his remark on conferences is spot on and I have always advocated for some type of knowledge common ground modality, what attracted my attention was the “WHY WON’T THEY TEST?!?” debate which I thought was well put to rest by now with the advent of TDD.

Before anything other, I have to reaffirm my position as a Luddite who has barely ever written a line of code and how I am only speaking as an Agile enterprise coach and self-appointed agility anthropologist. I hold it as a point of pride that I’ll be the devil’s advocate voice of consternation when it comes to technology and my comprehension of the matter is intentionally reduced so I can ask “dumb questions”. The entire premise of our podcast is around that. I get to say exactly what I think is happening from a human perspective and my technologist husband tells me what he sees from a tech perspective then we bridge them to see what we learned and if it can be applied.

“I don’t get it” -I made a bid to start telling Dave why I’m up in arms about the topic while we were filling up with coffee on the way to our respective morning Scrum of Scrums-

“What’s that?" - he tentatively offered knowing this could lead him to be late-