Should I start with Unit testing when teaching a new developer? [closed]

Question

I'm currently working on a project that is using technologies like Silverlight, WCF, EnterpriseLibrary, Unity, LinqToSql, NUnit, RhinoMocks in .Net 3.5

I'm training up a new developer who has some experience with VB script and SQL, but no exposure to .Net

Almost 100% of the codebase has unit test coverage, but it just seems that getting the new dev to start writing unit tests is too much, there is enough stuff going on to get his head around, without the added confusion of unit tests and mocks.

He's been assigned with the tasks to implement new features to the solution that cut through every layer, from UI to database, and as always there's a strong customer demand to get the feature into production as soon as possible.

What do you think the best approach would be for getting someone up to speed?

Answer 1

With absolutely no .NET experience, I'd say wrapping your head around TDD at the same time as learning .NET is a bit much.

Some people with plenty of .NET experience have a hard enough time with TDD - it requires a real change in fundamental approach to development. Going from VB to .NET isn't hard but it does take time.

You really want to avoid confusion - TDD is a good way to develop, but it is not the way and TDD != .NET development. In fact, it's totally orthogonal - trying to teach a new methodology and a new platform at the same time? I can't see how that's a good idea.