Here is a mini series of developing a new application. It's a text adventure game based on a homework assignment near the end of one introductory programming course.

The homework assignment said that from the students it usually takes 10-15 hours to make this application - and even then a framework for the UI, input handling and game loop was already provided (which I didn't have nor want). I was at that level 10 years ago, back in 2000, and I think that by now I have learned programming. ;)

During these first six episodes (in 2½ hours) I manage to implement the needed functionality, but it will still take a couple more episodes to clean up the code to meet my quality standards.

Though there is some overhead in using TDD, it will pay itself back quite soon when the development progresses. I'm guessing the flipping point to be around 2 hours, so roughly the size of this application, but it would be interesting to hear some research on that.

Here are the final episodes of Let's Code Text Adventure, where the code is refactored to be what the code wants its design to be. I clean up some primitive obsession smells and move some functionality to where it belongs.