So the bottom line again seems to be: it is not actually THAT important. Otherwise you would make the time.
Another possibility is that it is important, possibly even more important than the other things they are working on, but isn't getting prioritized for other reasons. They've succeeded thus far with the way they have prioritized things, but that doesn't mean that they made all the right choices, it just means they made enough right choices to survive to this point. The future may prove tdavis painfully right in his concern about not having test cases. Another company that may not have made enough other choices correctly may be able to cling to having tests and deployment automated as the thing that saves them. I don't think you can draw any real correlation except that it might not be that important, and only time will tell.
Comments
So the bottom line again seems to be: it is not actually THAT important. Otherwise you would make the time.
Another possibility is that it is important, possibly even more important than the other things they are working on, but isn't getting prioritized for other reasons. They've succeeded thus far with the way they have prioritized things, but that doesn't mean that they made all the right choices, it just means they made enough right choices to survive to this point. The future may prove tdavis painfully right in his concern about not having test cases. Another company that may not have made enough other choices correctly may be able to cling to having tests and deployment automated as the thing that saves them. I don't think you can draw any real correlation except that it might not be that important, and only time will tell.