Testing? Oh boy.

This is in response to a post at apperceive.blogs.com - I got so into it that I figured I should post it here too:

Yes - testing should drive development. I know my problem is that I often come up with some new cool feature (at least I think so)... test it to a certain point and then just upload it. How often has it happened that two minutes later I see a bug that I could have spotted if I had tested properly. Umpf. I just get too excited. Testing is soooooo boring. I need a personal 'kick-me-in-the-rear-end-before-I-upload-a-new-feature-assistant'.

I suspect that I might not be the only one with this problem. But I have to say - when you code something the bugs you're creating usually show up on the other side of the app - so the rule pretty much has to be - change ANYTHING in the code and then test THE WHOLE THING. But then you'd pretty much be spending most of your time testing - and then the app would never get out there, a big mistake in this fast paced world.

And then there's this other problem. You write an app - put it out there and people start doing things you hadn't anticipated. And if you don't think of a certain way of using something then you can't test it. So maybe the answer is - keep it in beta for ever... take a look at Flickr - it still has 'beta' plastered everywhere... it doesn't seem to bother anybody, it didn't bother Yahoo... I wonder why?

So now what?