In the course of staring at my ugly 30 line function trying to figure out how to break it up so I can make it testable, I have found a bug that I didn't know existed. It's probably not a bug I would have thought to write a test case for, either.
There is definitely some software development practice regarding which this forms part of a relevant argument, but I don't know what that practice is nor whether the argument is for it or against it
@dan I've figured for a long time that getting testable code is much more important than the tests themselves, but you can't really produce that testability without going through the test-writing ceremony.
My thinking on this has shifted somewhat, since tests can substantially help development at larger scales.
@dl@cantos.social oh yes, 100x this. Tests are the second client of your application APIs (the application "upper layers" are the first), and designing good APIs is so much easier when you have more than one use case