TDD has been around for two decades now. One would expect there to be some high profile success story. Yet none of the important software projects we use on a day to day basis seems to utilize it. Not even one.
Depending on the industry, reliability and ability to ship software that functions as advertised from day #1 can be a huge advantage, and for others it can be a wash or even a competitive disadvantage if it consumes too many resources. But I would not dismiss any such tool out of hand just because you personally have not seen or heard about the success stories.
After two decades of consulting in the software industry, you belong to a certain professional network. People love to talk, even if they won't always name their customers. I know people using formal methods and verification, in niches of the industry really, but have no indication that TDD is utilized for any big flagship products where it really matters.
I'm sure there are a few highly blogged about industry stories somewhere, but there's a world of a difference between those and a long time success in software development as a whole. There were high profile books written about Rational Unified Process, for example, and ~ nobody uses that anymore.
https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp/wiki https://github.com/neovim/neovim/tree/master/test https://github.com/openssl/openssl/blob/master/test/README.s...
What are you trying to say, that people don't write tests for their code?
Test-Driven Development means that the tests are written before the features.
OK, write the test…
> write a few lines of production code to make it pass
…before the feature.
I recognize the color you’re trying to add (it’s more like TFTFTF than TTTFFF), but it remains Test-Driven Development.
You're conflating unit tests with general testing
Uncle Bob makes it very clear that he only considers "unit tests" to be valid
So, no, these dogmatically "don't count"
(they do count when Uncle Bob supporters want to play half-truths and push for TDD instead of more realistic tests)
They obviously produce useful results and most would love to see more of it, yet it is tacked on afterwards and often by completely different people than the original developers, not as part of the development process.
They have a long way to go to have good enough tests that could be relied on for integration purposes. TDD isn't even on the map. And will probably never be.
Do you expect it to be advertised?
If nothing else, apparently there are enough of disciples out there that it would be a great way of hiring the right people.
You'd have to believe there is some sort of cabal, completely bent on keeping this enormous advantage to themselves in absolute secrecy, to argue that it is a software development success story.