> Miraculously, things still got done by manually testing.
That is still very normal and not very miraculously considering it happens all the time and very large companies run on this practice.
Although I am a fan of automated tests, I work with enough codebases that are robust and have been working for over 10 years that have no tests and others with a lot of test that are still fragile and miserable to work with. It is not all that black and white but you imply that as well with the getter/setter tests.
Back in the 90's and early 2000's, almost nothing had automated tests. Miraculously, things still got done by manually testing.
On the other hand, I worked at shops where every getter and setter had a test. Not much got done there.