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Comment by jmarchello

6 years ago

> The only reason why this product is still surviving and still works is due to literally millions of tests!

Lesson learned. Always write tests. Your business will depend on it.

One one hand, sure. They're still able to ship a working product despite having an abysmal code base. That's an excellent end result that must not be underestimated. Perhaps the problem that code base solves is really that difficult and there's no other way.

But on the other hand, over-reliance on tests is one of the reasons they ended up in this situation in the first place. It's like the car safety engineer's joke - How do you make cars safer? Install a knife in the middle of the steering wheel pointed at the driver.

When we're too sure that some safety feature will save us, we forget to be careful.