Hundreds of tests that were written basically for free in a few minutes even though a lot of them are kind of dumb?
Or hundreds of tests that were written for a five figure sum that took weeks or months, and only some of them are kind of dumb?
If you’re just thinking of code as the end in and of itself, then of course, the handcrafted artisanal product is better. If you think of code like an owner, an incidental expense towards solving a problem that has value, then cheap and disposable wins every time. We can throw our hands up about “quality“ and all that, but that baby was thrown out with the bathwater a very, very long time ago. The modern Web is slower than the older web. Desktop applications are just web browsers. Enterprise software barely works. Windows 11 happened. I don’t think anybody even bothers to scrutinize their dependency chains except for, I don’t know, like maybe missile guidance or something. And I just want to say Claude is not responsible for any of this. You humans are.
Neither. Tests should be written by developers only when it saves them time. The cost of writing them should be negative.
Instead of writing hundreds of useless tests so that the code coverage report shows high numbers, it is better to write a couple dozen tests based on business needs and code complexity.
Having used Bentley software products I can tell you with complete certainty that professional software developers have extremely bad judgment when it comes to the need to test software and verify its functionality. Developers just think they know what they’re doing because there’s typically not a strong feedback mechanism that inflicts serious career damage when they do things that are extremely lazy or stupid or unethical. How many people lost their job or had to change their name and live out the rest of their days in Juarez Mexico over AWS’ incomprehensible configuration causing an internet brown out? Anyone? A teenager serves cold onion rings at a burger joint and he’s on the street. Some lazy dweeb at Amazon blows up the internet and - come on, isn’t it about the friends we made along the way? It’s obscene and the lack of professionalism and accountability is a total disgrace.
Hundreds of tests that were written basically for free in a few minutes even though a lot of them are kind of dumb?
Or hundreds of tests that were written for a five figure sum that took weeks or months, and only some of them are kind of dumb?
If you’re just thinking of code as the end in and of itself, then of course, the handcrafted artisanal product is better. If you think of code like an owner, an incidental expense towards solving a problem that has value, then cheap and disposable wins every time. We can throw our hands up about “quality“ and all that, but that baby was thrown out with the bathwater a very, very long time ago. The modern Web is slower than the older web. Desktop applications are just web browsers. Enterprise software barely works. Windows 11 happened. I don’t think anybody even bothers to scrutinize their dependency chains except for, I don’t know, like maybe missile guidance or something. And I just want to say Claude is not responsible for any of this. You humans are.