It’s almost the time of the year where people start making new year’s resolutions and setting goals for the upcoming year. Allow me to propose something for your list: make TDD your meal ticket in 2010.

Why do I say this? Because TDD has revolutionized the way I develop software and has helped me write flexible and maintainable software with fewer defects and is a less stressful way to get things done. I can’t imagine ever going back to writing code without tests, and as a result it’s really difficult to work with developers who don’t write tests because they will write code that is hard to test, which means I won’t be able to write tests either.

In today’s economy, it’s important to differentiate yourself from the crowd if you’re looking for a job, hoping to get a raise, trying to get a promotion, etc. TDD can be that thing that differentiates you from everyone else out there. When I worked at Quick Solutions, we were always looking for developers who practice TDD, but developers with any amount of TDD experience are very hard to find.