Reminds of when I started reading Code Complete. The construction analogy really helped me conceptualize the difference between making a personal one-off project (like a shed) and an hardened mission-critical system requiring test suites for everything. (building NORAD). Not everything needs to be a TDD, elegant haiku.
It's true: and everything we're working on now will be considered legacy in 3-5 years time, and the devs working on it then will be moaning about all the short-sighted decisions we made. Believe it.
> Full regression tests are hard enough in software, but I can’t imagine trying to run through a “make sure everything in the house works” checklist in meatspace.<p>Interestingly, this is exactly what you do when you rent a boat, and also what owner does later when you return it. You go through a checklist and manually test and mark each feature. Kind of like manually running functional tests, except it's in a real world. :)