Hacker News Reader

Comment by bcrosby95 | Hacker News Reader

You need to put Fred on stuff that other developers have some buy in for. If you have zero automation, putting Fred on that is a bad idea. If you have zero tests, don't put Fred on that either.

Because the minute Fred leaves, all that work will rot then be discarded. It's better to have Fred work on something that will be maintained beyond his employment.

View on HN

Right, if the root cause is a culture issue (which results in not having adequate testing), then having Fred write the missing tests will not solve it.

I don't understand; why would tests and automation be discarded just because Fred leaves?

Most code needs ongoing maintenance - if folks aren't writing tests to begin with, then they probably aren't going to update them as functionality changes over time if Fred isn't around. And automation might be great for the current situation, but eventually need some improvements that nobody is willing to do. Eventually the tool seems less useful and people stop using it.

I'm not the OP, but I think they mean that the tests will slowly become out of date (if nobody else is updating them.)

Requirement changes, I change the code, test fails, I remove the test, Fred isn't there to speak for the test.

Automation fails, I turn it off and run the thing by hand. Fred isn't there to turn the automation back on, or yell at me for running it by hand instead of fixing the automation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com