At this point I would certainly not consider myself a great expert on testing, but I think I've acquired a bit more intuition on what and how to test things. I don't usually work in a strictly "test first" manner because often times it's easier for me to "sketch" out a few classes and go through a couple attempts at organizing things before I find an approach that works for me. In these cases, testing first is a pain in the butt.
Other times, for example if I'm implementing some kind of tricky data filter, writing the tests first helps me think about the possible problems I might have to deal with in my implementation.
In general though, my projects usually end up with close to 100% code coverage, even if some of the tests are not very granular. Throughout the lifecycle of the code I maintain, I add tests when fixing bugs to avoid regressions. The tests that I write obviously don't catch every bug, but they do usually stop me from making embarrassing, silly mistakes which I think covers a pretty significant percentage of bugs in general. I don't usually have to worry about breaking things when refactoring or adding new features, which is a great feeling that I pretty much never felt in either my "no testing" or "way too much testing" phases.
So basically I have a very pragmatic attitude towards testing which I think would be non-threatening to a skeptic like yourself. :-) Part of the problem is that you might be letting yourself get turned off to valuable and useful techniques, not because of the techniques themselves, but the way in which they are being presented to you.
But at the end of the day, you have to find whatever works best for you to make the best code you can, and don't worry about what other people think.