Exactly. The simplistic view that code can be accreted through a 'red/green/refactor' cycle of adding a test, coding til it passes, and so on, misses the meta-game that it makes the developer play: if you are going to stick within the rules, you have to decide which test to add that will force you to write the correct additional code so that it enables the refactoring you know your code actually needs. If you actually know what the code should look like, it's pointless trying to get there by trying to make the right sequence of legal test-first moves - it turns coding into a kind of chess puzzle.

TDD zealots will say "but you're overthinking it! YAGNI!" but that is to deny that sometimes, a smart developer really is capable of holding more than a small piece of the system in her head at a time and can actually see elegant, flexible solutions before the tests force her to.