> because now I have to split my attention to things I don't want to even be bothered with yet.

One of the reasons could that you realize you don't need those parts, so it would have been a waste of time to write tests for them.

Is that the same as saying I don't want to have to write types either? Maybe. Types are like lightweight incomplete specs.

> One of the reasons could that you realize you don't need those parts, so it would have been a waste of time to write tests for them.

Or perhaps the parts existed, were useful, did have tests, and now a new feature requires refactoring that temporarily breaks things before I finally bring the house in order again. But I don't want to throw out the tests because parts of them may still be useful.

My point is, if the code is capable of being compiled and run, who is anyone to dictate that I shouldn't be allowed to run it (even broken) during my development cycle, just for some bureaucratic "I know better than you" reason?

This is the problem I see all over - people peer out from their limited perspective, assume that they see enough, and then make excessively restrictive policy decisions about what we can and cannot do. It's hubristic and so very, very annoying to the rest of us, especially since they also have a tendency to double-down, and there seems to be no way of getting through to them.

> I don't want to even be bothered with yet

Why did you get out of your way to write tests about something that you don't want to be bothered about?

Because the test already exists as part of the solution that's worked up until now, and I don't want to modify it or any other related tests until I've finished my work to the point that I think the interface is stable enough for the tests to be updated.