[yowlingcat]

I think it's lazy and superstitious to make an analogy between practices in hygiene in medicine and software engineering.

But if you want to draw your analogy to its absurd conclusion, I think a lot of people would hate the idea of needing to wash their hands to do a surgery remote controlled by a joystick, because the sterility of the instrument doing the operation is independent of the sterility of the hands remote controlling it from afar.

[mnsc]

Doctors found out that washing their hands caused less people to die, and it's a bit of a nuisance but totally worth it.

Software devs have not found out that anyone dies unless we do strict tdd. But we have found out that unless we have a good amount of automated tests, the software becomes brittle and hard to change.

TDD is more of a style that some swear by that has alleged properties making everything better, like the way doctors wash hands in a peculiar way. But just "washing the hands" thoroughly would probably also help people not dying.

[ikiris]

Therac-25