Interesting? Testing isn't about programmer enjoyment, it is about correctness.

A 12 hour stress test is going to catch different things than a unit test. A simple suite of regression tests can be automatically run by a continuous integration tool to flag if the build is broken and alert the dev/team so things can be fixed quickly.

In this example it seems you are thinking of writing tests as a separate step from writing the code, which is part of why it seems like a chore. Make small changes, update the tests until everything passes & new code is exercised, commit, repeat. (Or if you are better disciplined than I, update your tests first and then write code until tests pass, repeat) Monster refactors, while sometimes necessary, are best avoided when possible.