I want to be a good developer and develop applications that are thoroughly tested but when was the last time you just hacked on a bit of code to try something out?

There's definitely a time and place for testing your code, whether you're part of a team or building a revenue generating product or service on your own, testing frameworks can give us the confidence we need to ship code on a frequent basis.

If I know enough of the framework and language to get by then I don't bother writing tests. I would rather roll my sleeves up and get into the parts of the code I know or even try new things with a part of the language or framework I haven't used. Just fiddling away with a simple script until I can get it working to validate an idea or a thought can be so rewarding. It might take me an hour to come up with something or half a day, but if that's all it takes then why bother getting all the correct bits in place to test it?

Exploring problems with just the code, trying things out, making it work as I go along. Yes it might take a few attempts to get there, but I always get there in the end. And that's the fun part of programming, getting it to work. I'm all for tested code but every now and again I like to just throw away the tests and just code and have some fun.