Testing
Post #7236 · source on Telegram
Spending 4 Story Points on Bugs Instead of 0.5 on Writing Tests
Description
A tweet from TDM (e/lambda) (@L8 vibe coder) featuring a Pepe the Frog meme styled as a talk show host on the 'Dave Ramsey Show' set. The text reads a dialogue: '"so you spend 4 story points a week on patching bugs?" "yes, dave" "just to avoid spending 0.5 story points on writing tests?" "that's correct, dave"' The Pepe character sits with arms crossed wearing a headset with microphone, looking unimpressed. The format parodies Dave Ramsey's financial advice show where callers describe obviously bad financial decisions, but applied to software development practices -- specifically the false economy of skipping tests to save time while spending far more time on bug fixes
More like this
More like this in Testing →
Use J and K for navigation
Comments
14Comment deleted
Dave Ramsey's debt snowball method, but for tech debt: stop writing tests, accumulate bugs faster, then declare sprint bankruptcy
Turns out the quickest way to inflate team velocity is to count every production hotfix as its own ‘new feature’ - just don’t ask Jira to do ROI math
After 15 years in the industry, I've learned that the only thing more expensive than writing tests is explaining to the board why a missing unit test caused a $2M production outage during Black Friday - but sure, let's save that half story point this sprint
Ah yes, the classic 8:1 technical debt interest rate - spending 4 story points per week servicing the principal on that 0.5 point test you refused to write. It's like paying $400/month in credit card interest to avoid a $50 annual fee, except your product owner is the one checking the statement and wondering why velocity keeps dropping while the backlog grows exponentially
Our quality strategy is the minimum-payment plan: skip 0.5 points of tests, accrue 4 points of bug interest weekly, and call the bankruptcy a hardening sprint
If story points were currency, skipping tests is a payday loan - the team keeps refinancing the same defect every sprint at compounding interest
Classic Agile arbitrage: 8x effort on fixes beats 1x prevention, because who needs dams when you love mopping floods?
One doesn't stop the other, tho Comment deleted
you're going to have bugs with tests 😅 Comment deleted
with tests that would be 5 story points, dave also what is 0.5 points? shouldn't it be as a fibonacci seq Comment deleted
The one who sees through an actual fake statements of the meme 👁️ 👃 👁️ 🫦 Comment deleted
Imagine when tests are actually going to take something like 0.5points to do and they are not included into the scope of the ticket 🌚 Comment deleted
Anyway Comment deleted
In the industry we call it "job security" Comment deleted