The ‘compilation phase’ is a really good idea. Writers can write their posts in a more limited language than HTML (either a new markup or something such as ReST or Markdown) and the compilation step can check for errors as well as theme the output and create metadata (as you suggested). The only thing I don’t like about this is that people may be encouraged to commit the HTML output into the VCS, instead the server should do the same build process.

Regarding front ends for writers, there’s no reason why a custom application can’t make the VCS changes on your behalf either by making calls to the command like VCS tools or by using a binding to the VCS (subversion comes with libsvn)

Check out http://octopress.org/ or if your a .NET guy http://code52.org/pretzel-review.html

That said, a day can make a lot of difference. I actually managed to check in some useful code today, so I got The Buzz. That, at least, is something. We’ll have to see how tomorrow goes.

I think it can be carried to extremes. If you first write a test, and since you’ve written zero code, your complete absence of code fails the test, for instance. That’s a bit extreme.

I’ve no actual experience with Test Driven Development, but, I’ve some experience writing code, and some experience with people coming and trying to sell their religion.