-Mel

There is certainly a learning curve involved that will slow you down until you become more comfortable with Cucumber and the related tools. Cucumber, alone, is pretty simple but if you are learning the entire RSpec and Webrat APIs as well that will certainly slow things down. Getting the process down in general also takes time. However, once you have been at it for a while you will develop a rhythm and you will get faster at it. You will also be able to judge better on what unit tests really add value and which ones are a waste of time.

The process in general is one that I think will appear to take longer initially than development with no tests at all. To be fair though, by starting with the business value first you may save yourself hours of time by deciding not to add certain features that really provide no value. The upfront requirement gathering that Cucumber encourages has helped save me hours of going down the wrong path on numerous occasions. So it is a really hard comparison to make. In general the process is a big time saver in the long run IMO. A better design tends to emerge with the use of unit tests which lends itself to lower maintenance costs and makes it much cheaper to add new features.

I hope that answers your question, and if not try posting to the mailing list.

-Ben

This feels a lot like when I was first learning guitar (still am). It was comforting and encouraging to hear experienced ppl tell me that with practice, I’d get better/faster. I’m hoping for someone to tell me that about BDD and outside in and that I just need to push through the learning curve.