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Shamim Rajani's avatar

on point!

In real systems, tests aren’t a nice-to-have. They’re the safety net that allows teams to move fast without breaking things

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Valentina Jemuović's avatar

Exactly, tests are a must-have rather than nice-to-have. Without tests, how can we satisfy the basic requirement - of delivering software that works? We cannot satisfy that in a safe, fast, and sustainable way, if we don't have tests.

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The AI Architect's avatar

Great perspective shift documented here. The regression bug nightmare during refactoring is such a universal pain point that it's surprising more devs dont get to the same conclusion earlier. Automated tests beeing priority #1 actually makes sense when the real cost is maintaining broken software, not writing the initial code.

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Valentina Jemuović's avatar

I know it's ironic that developers' jobs are to automate things (e.g., automate business processes so employees don't have to do them manually via Excel/phone)... yet development teams continue to do wasteful manual work like regression testing.

Indeed, the highest cost is maintenance, which accounts for the largest share of the total cost of ownership... unfortunately, teams mistakenly focus only on the initial cost, which is negligible.

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Jelena Cupac's avatar

It's interesting how tests went from being “boring” to exciting because they let you work safely on architecture.

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Valentina Jemuović's avatar

My personal motivated is they helped me avoid the pain of manual regression testing. For me, manual regression testing is very boring, time-consuming, and completely demotivating activity.

P.S. Here I'm referring to manual regression testing as the problem. on the other hand, I still do exploratory testing.

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