Nonsense. We test stuff all the time we don't understand "completely" (which is some kind of magical standard, as we obviously don't understand the universe com

Nonsense. We test stuff all the time we don't understand "completely" (which is some kind of magical standard, as we obviously don't understand the universe completely, so the very atoms and molecules that the machine is made of are in some sense not well understood.) Certainty is the alchemist's stone of philosophy. People have done all kinds of interesting stuff while attempting the impossible: turning knowledge into certainty. They can't, but that doesn't mean knowledge--which is inherently uncertain--is inferior. It means certainty is inferior, because it can't actually be achieved, regardless of what any pre-Bayesian thinker might have imagined. Knowledge is always uncertain. Tests are always incomplete. This does not mean "knowledge is impossible" or "you cannot say you tested the code" but rather "certainty is a chimera" and "compete test coverage is a futile goal." The whole point if good engineering is to adopt standards that are both achievable and useful, and the kind of test coverage that people run on code they are unfamiliar with to ensure it will do what they want it to is generally adequate for that. Evidence: most shipping code actually works.