> There are no tests there, but for the non-tech types who created these monsters, spending time on writing a test suite has a very real cost - there's less time to do the actual job they were hired for!
Not spending time on writing tests has a very real cost - a lot of time is spent on figuring out why your forecast was way off, or your year end figures don't add up.
Not to mention how big parts of the world are thrown into austerity, causing hundred of thousand dead, due to errors in your published research [0].
My point is that there isn't a tradeoff between getting "real work" done or writing tests. Either you write tests, or you spend the even more time mitigating the consequences of not writing tests. You can't save time by not writing tests (except for the most trivial cases).
Not spending time on writing tests has a very real cost - a lot of time is spent on figuring out why your forecast was way off, or your year end figures don't add up.
Not to mention how big parts of the world are thrown into austerity, causing hundred of thousand dead, due to errors in your published research [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt#Metho...