Reminds of when I started reading Code Complete. The construction analogy really helped me conceptualize the difference between making a personal one-off project (like a shed) and an hardened mission-critical system requiring test suites for everything. (building NORAD). Not everything needs to be a TDD, elegant haiku.
It's true: and everything we're working on now will be considered legacy in 3-5 years time, and the devs working on it then will be moaning about all the short-sighted decisions we made. Believe it.
Im doing this now. The moaning that is. But the worst part is I'm seeing the names of people who gave birth to my problems on new projects. Lets hope they learned something.
> Full regression tests are hard enough in software, but I can’t imagine trying to run through a “make sure everything in the house works” checklist in meatspace.
Interestingly, this is exactly what you do when you rent a boat, and also what owner does later when you return it. You go through a checklist and manually test and mark each feature. Kind of like manually running functional tests, except it's in a real world. :)
I would offer an airplane also as an example. First thing you do is walk the plane making a complete circle checking items off with a visual inspection.
