An Empirical Study of Test-Driven Development vs. Test-Last Development Using Eye Tracking

Abstract

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is an iterative software development technique in which unit tests are defined before production code, while Test-Last Development (TLD) is a more traditional development technique in which unit tests are written after the features are implemented. There have been a number of empirical studies investigating the effects of TDD compared to other approaches in terms of software quality and productivity. However, there are few investigations in which the TDD effects are explored from the viewpoint of the developers’ experience. This paper presents an eye-tracking study carried out in order to measure visual attention during the coding and test tasks when developers are using TDD compared to TLD. Our preliminary findings pointed out a similar visual effort proportion in both techniques, but a difference regarding eye gaze behavior between them which needs to be confirmed.