title: How does Test Driven Design help a one man software project?
body: <p>I've spent a lot of time building out tests for my latest project, and I'm really not sure what the ROI was on the time spent.  </p>
  
  <p>I'm a one man operation, and I'm building web applications.  I don't necessarily have to "prove" that my software works to anyone (except my users), and I'm worried that I spent a good deal of time needlessly rebugging test code in the past months.</p>
  
  <p>My question is, while I like the idea of TDD for small to large software teams, how does it help a one man team build high quality code quickly?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>
  
  <p>=>  ran across this today, from the blog of joel spolsky, one of the founders of stackoverflow:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html</a></p>
  
  <p>"Zawinski didn’t do many unit tests. They “sound great in principle. Given a leisurely development pace, that’s certainly the way to go. But when you’re looking at, ‘We’ve got to go from zero to done in six weeks,’ well, I can’t do that unless I cut something out. And what I’m going to cut out is the stuff that’s not absolutely critical. And unit tests are not critical. If there’s no unit test the customer isn’t going to complain about that.”"</p>
  
  <p>as i'm getting older i think i'm realizing more and more that it's just all about speed and functionality.  i'd love to build unit tests.  but since we only have so much time at our disposal, i'd rather build it faster, and rely on beta testing and good automated error reporting to weed out any problems as they crop up.  if the project eventually gets big enough that this bites me in the a**, it will be generating enough revenue that i can justify a rebuild.</p>