I like testing and automation, because I forget to do things. I write things down on pieces of paper, do "it" once, and then never do "it" again for a long time, so next time I need to do "it" I've forgotten what to do - and I can't find the paper note....
Tests are also good as they test things to make sure you've not forgotten something. In the most recent case it didn't help as the test missed some skips so the numbers don't add up. On my machine with all the bits all the tests passed, but on my work machine some of the tests need to be skipped, but as not enough tests were skipped, you get an error. Anyhow, I know about it now, so I'll fix it. The good thing is that I can learn from this to improve the tests so it won't happen again.
I also like automation, it makes things easy to repeat and more predictable. I use it at work a lot, but not enough I don't know enough Bash to really use it as much as I should. But I've learnt a lot about SSH in particular, and it's been interesting. I just need to figure out how to get more testing and automation into my module process, I missed a file in the manifest, so the file didn't make it into the distribution.... I'd swear I've seen comments about this before, but I can't remember where!
I've also cleaned some more old code out this week. Urgh! I don't know what I was doing, but some of it's very bad. However on the upside the last two scripts I've refactored worked pretty much first time, and being developed on paper first, makes them a lot cleaner.
