Automated testing existed at the time Brooks wrote his essay. In "The Soul of a New Machine", published 5 years prior, engineers arrived in the morning and exa

Automated testing existed at the time Brooks wrote his essay. In "The Soul of a New Machine", published 5 years prior, engineers arrived in the morning and examined the results of the automated tests that ran overnight, looking for regressions and improvements in the microcode for the new processor. The author treats this sort of behavior as standard engineering work, something all serious engineering professionals do and have been doing for as long as such a thing was possible. Not new, not novel. What we have now is the result of refinements and improvements, perhaps it is a series of innovations. You are right - automated testing doesn't refute Brooks.