"Rootbeer was created using Test Driven Development and testing is essentially important in Rootbeer"
I'm not sure what the "essentially" means here, but this is the first "big" program I'm aware of that name-checks TDD, and a counter-example to my theory that programs where much of the programmer effort goes into algorithms and data structures are not suited to TDD.
Was the TDD approach "pure"? (Only one feature implemented at a time, with absolutely no design thought given to what language features might need to be implemented in the future.)
I'd think a project like this is ideally suited to TDD: you know what the results should be for most operations, and they are easily testable. It's the same reason the Perl 6 test suite has been so valuable to the various Perl 6 compiler projects. (Not that any of them claim to use TDD.)
I agree, the biggest philosophical problem with TDD in my mind is that it neglects design -- a little foresight can make all the difference, as in that sudoku case study that went off the rails. But if you are building to a vetted, stable spec as in the case of Java, design isn't nearly as important as compliance so TDD can shine.
I'm not sure what the "essentially" means here, but this is the first "big" program I'm aware of that name-checks TDD, and a counter-example to my theory that programs where much of the programmer effort goes into algorithms and data structures are not suited to TDD.
Was the TDD approach "pure"? (Only one feature implemented at a time, with absolutely no design thought given to what language features might need to be implemented in the future.)