I get nods when I demand some form of automated testing because "everyone's IQ and experience tends to become irrelevant at 3 am when you're tired and hungry working on a critical bug before the release ships." I ask people if they trust that developer, not the usual person you know. Beyond that, there's few better ways to show how to use a piece of code than by writing a test that actually does use it as you would, so it cuts down on some documentation if people can trust that it'll be there.

Well of course devs are up to 3am, it's because they're forced to spend huge chunks of time writing and updating all those automated tests.

Not writing the tests gets one to bed earlier, ergo well-rested programmer, ergo no release bugs.

That must depend on your work environment. I do his a lot, but I work on an in house app, with around 40 users. I have user acceptance testing rather than unit testing, and it catches far more bugs. If I do mess up, it is easy enough to roll back.

Is this satire? Because the point of automated tests is to avoid making your users your testers.

Why would it be satire?

We are short of IT staff and the lab staff seem to have more free time. Why not involve them in the process? I communicate with them, get to understand what they need better, and save time on writing tests that would probably be obsolete a few months down the line, due to the rapidly changing nature of our business. "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".

Coding to best standards is a nice ideal to have, but in almost every place I have worked getting something working quickly has been a far higher priority.

There's the ideal world, and the real world. The real world does not always allow you to follow best practices (or even good practices).

Sad but true.