45: David Heinemeier Hansson - Software Development and Testing, TDD, and exploratory QA

David Heinemeier Hansson is the creator of Ruby on Rails, founder & CTO at Basecamp (formerly 37signals). He's a best selling author, public speaker, and even a Le Mans class winning racing driver.

All of that, of course, is awesome. But that's not why I asked him on the show. In 2014, during a RailsConf keynote, he started a discussion about damage caused by TDD. This was followed by a few blog posts, and then a series of recorded hangouts with Martin Fowler and Kent Beck. This is what I wanted to talk with David about; this unconventional yet practical and intuitive view of how testing and development work together.

It's a great discussion. I think you'll get a lot out of it.

Special Guest: David Heinemeier Hansson.

Sponsored By:

• PyCharm Professional: If you value your time, you owe it to yourself to try PyCharm. The team has set up a link just for Test & Code listeners. If you use the link [testandcode.com/pycharm](http://testandcode.com/pycharm), you can try PyCharm Professional for free for 3 months. This offer is only good until Sept 1, so don't forget. Plus using the link (I'll also have it in the show notes) lets PyCharm know that supporting Test & Code is a good thing.

Support Test & Code: Python Software Testing & Engineering

Links:

• Is TDD dead? - Part 1
• My reaction to "Is TDD Dead?", including links to the other parts of the video series
• RailsConf 2014 - Keynote: Writing Software by David Heinemeier Hansson - YouTube
• TDD is dead. Long live testing. (DHH)
• Test-induced design damage (DHH)
• Slow database test fallacy (DHH)