I like to think that CS is just a different approach to math.

Of course, I say this as somebody who likes Haskell where the programmers work really hard at pretending to be mathematicians :)

However, even when I'm writing in other language, I think about things in terms of math. Additionally, my CS courses so far have all been heavily influenced by math, except for systems that was much more heavily influenced by EE.

So, at least for me, programming is very much like math. Just shinier. And I do think that more math--or at least mathematical thinking--would help most programmers.

However, the rant against testing is just silly. Tests are not a replacement for math--they augment it. We need tests because, at heart, CS is an engineering discipline: math is just a tool we use very pervasively.

Haskell is one of the more extreme typed functional languages, and yet Haskell programmers are very amenable to testing. In fact, Haskell programmers tend to go above and beyond normal testing: we use property-based testing (QuickCheck). Instead of just having unit tests, we actually generate random tests.

Besides, lets look at physics: they have great mathematical models. However, as soon as you actually apply physics--basically engineering--you need to test everything extensively. There is a reason we have exhaustive crash tests, after all.

So: math is good for programmers. Tests are also good for programmers. The two cannot replace each other.