[what a lousy title - I may edit this later]

Brian Marick has a nice write-up about how to decide whether to automate. I like it because of all the good things he mentions that are not about automation. For example:

The main difference between my smoke test suite and anyone else’s is that I’ll concentrate on making the tests exercise different paths through the support code by setting them up differently, doing basic operations in different orders, trying different environments, and so forth. I’ll think about having a variety of "inessential" steps. These tests will be more work to write, but they’ll have more value. (Note that I’ll use variety in even my manual testing, to increase the chance of stumbling over bugs in support code.)

2:47:15 PM    

Bret is a tester, and his writing shows it. Here is a write-up of something that should be obvious, but often is not - authority in testing can come from other places than "correctness"  11:37:30 AM    

Selections from a regular column about testing. After reading them, I wonder why this person is trying so hard to convince himself that testing is an important, worthwhile, and satisfying job.

Turns out, he's not a tester. Not a big surprise.

Don't expect someone else to find the fun in your work for you - find it yourself.  11:33:02 AM