I found out today that productivity gains by TDD doesn't actually have any empirical backing despite numerous studies.

It now goes in the same drawer as object oriented programming.

I think TDD helps fight the battle to reduce technical debt. Edge cases get picked up early and built for rather than found by QA and allowing for a raging fire storm of chaos. Also means that that time working on these edge cases counts as development time and is given room instead of time during QA when you may have moved onto other projects. ... IMO but good to know about those test!

I don't see how it would help in productivity. It just gives you a certain confidence that your code is correct, so that you don't have to waste time fixing it in the future.

However @CogInTheWheel, evidently no time is actually saved.

@shellbug I thought that was pretty much a core principle of productivity: not wasting time. ?

@Hedgepig yes, but you actually have to spend time writing the tests. So, no productivity gained, only some certainty that the code won't fail.

@shellbug that makes sense