What are different benefits of test driven development?

Everywhere in the field of software engineering the talks about the test driven development are on!  This software development methodology was previously considered to share some relation with an agile software development methodology known by the name of extreme programming or XP. 

Later the process came to be known for its individual standing having its own objectives, features and benefits and of course drawbacks. The test driven development methodology is a kind of repetitive development process that progresses by means of the repetition of some short development cycles that consist of the following steps:

1. Addition of tests
2. Execution of all the tests to see if they fail or not.
3. Writing of the code by which the tests will pass.
4. Execution of the automated test cases and check whether they succeed or not.
5. Refactoring of the code
6. Repetition of all the above steps.

The repetition of the above mentioned steps is continued till the code which is under testing is considered to be complete and proper working. 

Benefits of Test Driven Development (TDD)

The test driven development is known for its several benefits that outnumber its drawbacks. This article is focused up on the benefits of the test driven development. So let us begin by counting its benefits:

1. According to a research it was observed that the test driven development requires writing of more and more tests which in turn increases the productivity of the testers honing their testing skills.

2. A hypothesis stating a relation between the code quality and test driven development was observed which cannot be neglected! There is a considerable affect of the test driven development up on the quality of the source code. This hypothesis established a direct correlation between the productivity and the test driven development.

3. Programmers who use the test driven development process do not need to invoke the debugger quite often as in the case of the other development methodologies. The test driven development when used with a version control system proved to be more effective in the production of the code that has passed the test.

4. The correctness of the code is validated by simple methods rather than the complicated ones in the test driven development along with the driving of the design of the software system or application.

5. It allows the software developer to imagine how a particular functionality will be put in use by the user or client and thus helps in maintaining a sharp focus up on the test cases. The application interface is what that is considered more than the implementation.

6. The test driven development provides a means to approach the code via the test cases unlike other methodologies that make use of preconceptions or some mathematical assertions etc.

7. The test driven development allows the developer to make small steps wherever required unlike the other development methodologies.

8. With the test driven development the developer can effectively focus up on the task at hand.

9. Test driven development provides the coverage of at least one test to each and every functionality. This makes the developers and programmers more confident of the code.

10. Even the though more length of code is required during the implementation of the test driven development, at the end the code typically gets shorter. With large number of tests it is made sure that there are fewer bugs in the code.

11. The testing is carried out quite frequently and early so that more of the bugs are caught. Thus the TDD in a way avoids hectic debugging of the code.

12. With test driven development, more flexible, extensible and modular code is produced.