Test driven development a sign of static typing’s failure?

Les Stroud raises the interesting question of whether static typing and other software engineering efforts have failed. Here is my commentary on the subject:

I’m not certain if static typing came into existence for aiding software engineering or for performance reasons. Dynamic languages tend to be slower than the statically typed ones, but modern computers are fast enough that it really doesn’t matter.

I would certainly hope that more tools will come along to assist in the development process. Doing modeling and big design up front was intended to help ensure that we end up with good, well-designed pieces of software. But, I personally think that test driven development is a lot more effective at building a system that will survive all of the changes it will go through.

You can say that the rise of TDD is the result of the failure of earlier attempts at improving software engineering. I think it’s more a sign of the evolution of software engineering itself than a sign of the failure of software engineering. I’m certain that TDD won’t be the last word on the subject.