But that is exactly the point I'm trying to make. A coach won't be able to do a dribble (soccer) or sprint for the header goal, the same way a manager shouldn't be writing the unit tests or OAuth login, but both are involved in their fields and don't magically forget the rules of the sport or what OOP is.
I'm not advocating that bad managers should learn through google, but if you were a good developer and didn't program for 10 years, if the time came to decide between TDD or BDD for the project (though that should be a Team Lead or CTO job, not a PM) he should be able to brush up quickly. Maybe not decide if you should use Shoulda or xUnit or whatever, but have a general picture of what the developers they are managing are talking about.
What do binary decision diagrams (BDDs) have to do with TDD (test driven development)?
If this manager hasn't been doing development for 10 years, he is a lot cause. But this doesn't have much to do with programming, just being involved in building software. But in cases where their experience isn't fresh enough, they will have a tendency to either be static (we will write our web project in COBOL, because that is what I used to use dammit) or be very trendy to a fault (I heard post modern node-oriented programming was hot, let's use that for our compiler).
I'm not advocating that bad managers should learn through google, but if you were a good developer and didn't program for 10 years, if the time came to decide between TDD or BDD for the project (though that should be a Team Lead or CTO job, not a PM) he should be able to brush up quickly. Maybe not decide if you should use Shoulda or xUnit or whatever, but have a general picture of what the developers they are managing are talking about.