Spreadsheets rule

TDD is a software programming practice that emphasizes a short development cycle for incremental construction of high-quality, maintainable applications and libraries. TDD yields defect reduction, requirements traceability, code quality, comprehensive regression tests, and other benefits — in some cases.

However, there are times not to use TDD, or to otherwise restrict its application. Considerable (if not entirely conclusive) evidence posits that inspection is even better than TDD in several regards.

Nearly all the discussion around that position is focused on commercial-like programming, and often it emphasizes what I call algorithmic programming. This is almost certainly a minority of all programming. “Spreadsheets are programs and Excel is the most popular software development environment in the world!” Hjalmar Gislason rightly proclaims.

Even in the world of more conventional programs, the emphasis is increasingly on integration rather than “hand-coded” algorithms.