1167
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by copacetic@discuss.tchncs.de to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 days ago

One problem I could see with the aggressive testing (which also happens in human-written codebases) is that it becomes hard to tell essential behaviour apart from details. If you nail everything down with a unit/integration test, nothing can be changed anymore.

I could imagine that this is part of the reason why LLMs love to duplicate code rather than adjusting existing code.

[-] porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago

Well... That's why you test the public API and not the internals. And if you need to change the API you should have a good enough reason that changing the tests is okay too.

[-] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 points 3 days ago

Well, since it's "just" LLM time writing the tests, test the internals too, but clearly mark which tests are the public API and which tests are intnernal, so it knows to never ignore / update a public API test without consultation, but it an internal test fails it can make the call: did this test start failing because I unintentionally broke something, or because the test was testing something that no longer matters - I have seen Claude go both ways, fixing its own mistake due to a test catching an unintended consequence of a change, and also just patching the test because the old test was... old.

this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2026
1167 points (98.8% liked)

Programmer Humor

33809 readers
2082 users here now

Welcome to Programmer Humor!

This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!

For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.

Rules

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS