The Worst Work Day of My Life So Far

Sounds frustrating for sure.... but worst work day of your life? I take it the author is young or has had fairly good jobs up until this point.

edit: I originally commented after misreading the title, somehow failing to see the word "work". Still, hyperbole?

The people at hand are ridiculous for sure, but the OP seems similar to the guy who suggests rewriting the company's code base in a new language/framework after the first week.

We don't write any kind of tests at work...but I don't really take a condescending attitude towards it.

Expertise is rare in the tech world. So rare that you have to assume that whoever you're working with doesn't have it. In this case I would have made it so the front-end guys's workflow didn't touch the back-end. That means coding up an admin interface centered around their needs and storing the templates they're working on in the database, exposing only the helper methods they need.

Obviously this takes time, so in the meantime, the broken workflow would have to suffice. I would have analyzed the workflow carefully to understand exactly what they needed to do their jobs.

As soon as the admin interface is finished, I'd have slid it in after hours one day and sent a nice friendly email about how we're improving the system for them. If I did my job right, they'd love it, if not, then it would be a few days /weeks tweaking the workflow so they do. But no way would we go back to the broken workflow.

If your boss doesn't let you do this, then it's resume-updating time. That situation will only get worse.

In their defense UI tests are usually the most brittle and provide the least value. I don't think I've ever seen UI testing done right. I usually avoid it.

I don't have a lot of respect for any coder who is afraid of leaving the pretty GUI of Windows. They would rather fragment the project than get their hands dirty.