Good article, Steve, and one that I can really relate to, being a developer myself. I've always worked in small shops (I'm currently working in the smallest shop I've ever worked in), so we don't have QA staff. We (all of 2 of us) wear multiple hats. I consider my testing abilities to be great, but the truth is probably more like I'm fair to good at best. I've never worked with anyone who has TDD experience. And it's never come up as a topic in my .NET user group. Once I applied for a test position, but didn't get the job. However, at the interview I did get the opinion that testing was looked down upon by the rest of the development staff. I tend to think that QA, and testers especially, are the red-headed step child that no one wants. It's a pity, because as you say we're left with buggy code.

On the other hand, look at the cadence of software release today! The single most important issue in the marketplace today is to get your product out ASAP, and then fix it once it's out there. If you're a week behind the competition, it's like you shouldn't even bother.

Lastly, I'd like to say that although testing is something that is taken for granted, I for one, would like to have some good old fashion training on it. In a user group or something like that. Now that I think of it, I don't call ever seeing testing as a main topic, in something like a New Horizons training course, or any other training groups out there. There's probably a Pluralsight video for it, but at least for me a video is great, so long as your particular probably is almost exactly like what's covered in the video.