That is not a compelling argument. Yes, tests are important. However tests also require maintenance, so they are debt just your like dependencies. If writing my own build and HTTP service requires a few tests I would happily take that over failing for weeks with hundreds of megs of extraneous code that doesn't work.

Honestly, I think people justify this nonsense to themselves because they are scared to write original code, even if its incredibly tiny. The primary purpose of writing software is automation, if you aren't automating things with everything you write you are probably just an expense center. This is the financial way to say that your misplaced objectives make you unproductive and/or unreliable. It doesn't have to be that way.