Why are TDD 'Spikes' called 'Spikes?

Question

The test driven development guys refer to a quick, exploratory, investigation that involves coding something up to see if it works, a spike.

An

Answer 1

IMHO the term spike relates to driving a nail through a plank. Yup.. here it is

"Spike" is an Extreme Programming term meaning "experiment". We use the word because we think of a spike has a quick, almost brute-force experiment aimed at learning just one thing. think of driving a big nail through a board.
-- Extreme Programming Adventures in C# - Ron Jeffries