---
title: not worth it
teaser:
tags: web,testing
author: Jared Carroll
published_on: 2008-01-07
---

Behaviour-Driven Development.

The latest fad thats been around for a while but seems to be picking up a lot
more lately.  I messed with it and blew it off a while ago but that was a while
ago, so I decided to check it out again and see what all this malarkey is about.

From [behavior-driven.org](http://behaviour-driven.org/Introduction)

> It is not too surprising that it takes apprentice TDD practitioners a while to
> realize that TDD is not about testing when all of the nomenclature surrounding
> it is described in terms of testing.  The aim of BehaviourDrivenDevelopment
> (BDD) is to address this shortcoming. By using terminology focused on the
> behavioural aspects of the system rather than testing, <abbr title="Behavior
> Driven Development">BDD</abbr> attempts to help direct developers towards a
> focus on the real value to be found in TDD at its most successful.

So <abbr title="Behavior Driven Development">BDD</abbr> was created because it
was hard to teach people that they had to write tests for code that didn’t exist
yet?  So all <abbr title="Behavior Driven Development">BDD</abbr> does is change
the vocabulary to make it seem like you’re not writing tests but “behavioural
aspects” of your system?

I get how when practicing TDD your test is the first client of the code you’re
about to write; essentially developing interfaces the way you’d like to use
them, so it is design.

From <abbr title="Behavior Driven Development">BDD</abbr> advocate [Dave
Astels](http://blog.daveastels.com/files/BDD_Intro.pdf)

> Does that mean you write tests? No. It means you write specifications of what
> your code will have to do. It means you specify the behaviour of your code
> ahead of time.

Ok that’s TDD to me.  Tests are a way of specifying what your code will do.  But
now I have to refer to them as “specifications”?

Let’s look at some code now.

Here’s the popular Ruby <abbr title="Behavior Driven Development">BDD</abbr>
library [rspec](http://rspec.rubyforge.org).  The following code was taken off
their site.

```ruby
describe Account, " when first created" do

  before do
    @account = Account.new
  end

  it "should have a balance of $0" do
    @account.balance.should eql(Money.new(0, :dollars))
  end

  after do
    @account = nil
  end

end
```

Ok `#describe` is basically defining the equivalent of a `TestCase` in xUnit.
Now `#before` and `#after` are equivalent to the `#setup` and `#teardown`
methods in xUnit.  And `#it` is the equivalent of a test method in a `TestCase`
subclass in xUnit.

I have 2 problems with this

1. I have to learn and start using this new language to talk about tests
1. I have to learn a whole new syntax to write tests

I’ve used xUnit in a number of languages, its what I know.  I like subclassing
`TestCase`, getting #setup and #teardown for free and knowing that if I name my
test methods starting with “test” that they’re going to get executed
automatically.  That is simple, obvious and what the majority of developers out
there know.

I jumped on Rails because it took building web applications clearly to a new
level, but to me <abbr title="Behavior Driven Development">BDD</abbr> is not
doing the same when it comes to testing.  Somebody give me a reason to use it.