[themusicgod1]

This is written in 2003: I do not think it is a coincidence that Kent Beck is credited ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development ) with re/discovering Test Driven Development in that year.

TDD can go horribly wrong, too -- but if your tests are on high-enough-level functionality, and you maintain them, then they can encompass the lessons you learn from fucking up every time you do it. Writing & Maintaining tests isn't fun, just as fixing bugs isn't fun -- so in spirit these kinds of arguments hold just as much sway: there are fun parts of programming, and there are parts of programming that are significantly less fun, but even if you fork and start from scratch, it is feasible to have a checklist of bugs/features developed in the order that they are developed initially.

Do most open source projects do this, even the more well-maintained? Of course not. However, if people are seriously worried about this phenomenon, that's probably one of the ways developed in the decade since this essay was published to approach it.