"tightly coupled" is the norm (I'd pick on Rubyists, but really it's the problem in any language I'm familiar with). It's hard to get over the hump. So I agree

"tightly coupled" is the norm (I'd pick on Rubyists, but really it's the problem in any language I'm familiar with). It's hard to get over the hump. So I agree. On the other hand, I think it's also very pragmattic to say "this isn't working for me, there's more important things to focus on". I think manual testing is underrated, and even integration testing is probably not given it's due as one of the better ways to test a product in an automated fashion. Unit tests in the TDD sense aren't (IMO) all that useful as tests. I'm a big fan of the tweak in calling it Test Driven Design personally.