The truth is in the middle somewhere, regarding tests at least (yes, your microservices story is insane).

I think the author could have been happier with the no-test decision if they had treated the initial work as a prototype with the idea of throwing it away.

At the same time, writing some tests, should not be seen as a waste of time since if you're even at all experienced with it, it's going to be faster than constantly reloading your browser or pressing up-up-up-up-up in a REPL to check progress (if you're doing the latter you are essentially doing a form of sorta reverse TDD).

So I dunno... I may be more in line with the idea that's a bit insane to prevent people from writing tests BUT so many people are so bad at writing tests that ya, for a go-gettem start up it could be the right call.

I certainly agree with your whole cost-benefit analysis paragraph.