[kennethtilton]

That's fine. My point was that for you automated testing is a litmus test that turned you against a successful group of great guys. What I do in those situations is check my presuppositions. Maybe I can learn something.

Did you ask them about their practice? Did you ask how often they had to roll back deployments, or at least take a hit on something automated testing would have caught?

[dootdoot]

That makes sense. I've found automated testing to be incredibly useful and just necessary to be able to really rework code well. Not using automated testing and having a really fast release cycle seems like a recipe for a lot of pain (and they said that testing was taking them forever).

I asked them about their testing - turns out they were looking to have someone help them develop a way to test their software (so at least they want to do it).

I wish I'd asked them the two questions you listed at the end, they are much better questions than a bland "do you test?". They did break the build some times.

[kennethtilton]

Oh. They actually want to step up their testing game? So why this thread? <g>

btw, I am glad no one asked the alternative to testing -- it would have been more a textbook on software development. <g>