I posted a
thread at the msforums.ph site regarding this question to get a feel of how developers feel about testing. So far there have been only a few replies.
When I first encountered test-driven development, I knew it would be helpful to learn this technique. What threw me off, of course, was the notion of doing tests first, even before you write the class code. It was very different from what I have learned, from learning programming on my own and in my past work environments. Struggle I did -- sometimes I ended up writing tests after (to validate my code); many times I ended up not writing tests at all. Good luck running that code in production...
It's only now that I am realizing the benefits of doing test-first development. The hard part is always the beginning: what test shall I write first? Many times I realize that my difficulty is due to my tendency to jump the gun and focus on what classes I want to create and what methods and properties they should have. I've found that it is helpful to relax and think first of what the class should do and how the consuming code can call it. I start with a small feature. It's even helpful not to think of the class but to think of what it should be able to accomplish.
I hope to be able to come up with a demo of how to do things test first in a few days. Stay tuned. If time permits I will even make it a video demo.