Red Green Repeat Adventures of a Spec Driven Junkie

Test First and Production Access

After watching Brian Cantrill’s Debug Under Fire talk, I am wondering:

By not letting developers experience the hell of production sooner, are they not taking test first seriously?

I noticed that senior developers in my team do test first, especially those that had production experience before joining my team.

Junior and even mid-level team members avoid production access.

Yet, when there’s a production issue, it’s me who is dealing with their code, which surprise, surprise: the code usually isn’t written in test first manner.

Because team members that don’t test first are the same ones without production access - could the solution be to having everyone write tests first is:

Get everyone access to production and have them solve problems when they arise?

Nothing teaches like first-hand experience. By working around problems myself, am I robbing team members of this experience?

More to ponder.