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Comment by req2 | Hacker News Reader

jrockway bromidically responded to a throwaway joke that in itself already acknowledged the content of the response.

Judging from various codebases I've had to maintain, most programmers don't think this is a joke. They really think this guy wasted 8 hours learning how his code is supposed to work. They would have just reverted to last night's version and moved on to adding some more technical debt. (It's OK because it's test-driven development. If the tests pass, the code is fine!)

I'm sure most of the people here feel the same way. It just seemed like an audience mismatch, and if you acknowledged it (either the joke nature or the audience mismatch), I wouldn't have felt the need to "Whoosh" you.

I agree with your point but the TDD comment tacked on at the end is wrong and adds nothing.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone speak in support of TDD say that the code is fine if the tests pass. The canonical process of TDD explicitly calls for refactoring after the tests pass. That step is crucial and lasts as long as it takes for the programmer to be satisfied with the code (e.g. 8 hours).

I also found no evidence in the article that there was TDD involved. Perhaps I've misunderstood either the article or your comment. If that is the case I'd gladly retract my criticism.

If you google "bromidically", this response is now number 2 in Google - after dictionary.com.

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