Comment by rjpower9000

> incremental search from a simple start point towards a solutions

Good point. More broadly than just TDD, we might characterize an "easy" problem as one where the surface from conception to completion is broadly visible and there's a logical set of steps (i.e. "differentiable"). Or maybe "easy" is I can see the full set of steps immediately, and "tractable" is that I've got a good guess.

But the set of steps you can take is highly dependent on your knowledge and skillset. For example, if I know how about completing the square, then deriving the quadratic equation is a basic algebra exercise. If I don't, then I might struggle for a long time before I manage to discover that key insight.

I'm sure there are coding methodologies which can lead to better or worse results, but they augment knowledge or skill, they don't replace it.