You Don't Need Testing

All I hear about all the time is how valuable testers are. At the Better Software Conference, everyone was thinking and talking about Testing. Whether it was Automated Unit Testing or Customer Acceptance Testing, everyone was thinking about Testing. Well, I completely disagree.

Testing is useless and there's nothing of value gained from it.

First of all, you've all hired the best and brightest developers there are in your field. Most companies talk about hiring the “Top 1%” but you really did it. Their code always turns out flawless the first time around, congrats.

Next, your requirements are solid from beginning to end. You learned from your last projects, listened to the complaints of your customers and developers and this time you've mastered it. You've managed to squeeze out all the uncertainty, eliminated all the misinterpretations, and have even managed to get everyone to agree on every aspect of every requirement.

Next, your code is completely future-proof. You've already built it in a way to handle new requirements from new customers and all of your developers are keeping this model in mind. Refactoring is for fussy obsessive-compulsive types, your team does it right the first time.

Talking about your developers, since they're all the “Top 1%”, they've provided excellent documentation and each possess a complete understanding of the API's they're working with in addition to understanding how their code interacts with the other new code.

Besides, we all know writing tests take too much time. This time can more effectively be used to write new code, expand the systems in new ways, and work on documentation.

Next, your build process takes care of all of it. You know that wrong code can't possibly compile, so you're protected there.

Finally, we all know that this is what customers are for. They appreciate finding your bugs, reproducing them, and always share full reports with your team. They love spending their time doing this and should just be happy to get the code they want. And their environments are all identical, so there's nothing to worry about there.

Personally, I'm glad to get this weight off my chest. I feel like I can get back to the business of running my company and slinging code instead of thinking of these pesky aspects that can now go away. If you don't have any testing – Unit, Integration, Customer Acceptance – no problem, I completely understand and agree with you.

In summary, testing is worthless. Now that we all understand this, we can move on with life. Thank you.