it's great you guys are so skilled / cool that you can work with live electrical, but he clearly said he has never done electrical so why downplay it and make it seem like its not a big deal?
@
dj_rice
if you were serious about never working with electrical, you'll be OK with just turning off the breaker, but make 100% sure it's off by turning on the existing lights and make sure they don't power up. the tester i linked is just an added layer of protection to make sure there's no current flowing and/or making sure there's no other live wires around.
It actually saved me once when i was replacing a smoke alarm in my house (the idiots who owned this place before replaced a wired smoke detector with battery only, so when i went to change it out for a smoke/CO combo unit, there were actual live wires in the same junction box i was working in which i only knew were live because of the tester)