""Test-driven development (TDD) produces dramatically better results from AI coding agents," says the report [PDF] on the workshop. "TDD prevents a failure mode where agents write tests that verify broken behavior. When the tests exist before the code, agents cannot cheat by writing a test that simply confirms whatever incorrect implementation they produced.""
"TDD is an approach to software development where automated tests are written before the production code. The tests are expected to fail until the code is written. TDD is valuable for iterative development and refactoring - improving code without changing its behavior - since it verifies that the code continues to behave as expected."
"Fowler and Thoughtworks hosted the workshop 25 years on, to "rethink how software is built" in the light of "a new inflection point: the shift to AI-native software development." The workshop - conducted under the Chatham House Rule, where participants' names and affiliations are not disclosed - identified engineering discipline as a key topic surrounding AI coding. If AI writes the code, the rigor that used to live in coding "does not disappear, it moves elsewhere," the report states."
Twenty-five years after the Agile Manifesto, a workshop hosted by a manifesto signatory reconsidered software construction in light of a shift to AI-native development. Test-driven development (TDD) produces dramatically better results from AI coding agents and prevents a failure mode where agents write tests that verify broken behavior. When tests exist before code, agents cannot cheat by producing tests that merely confirm incorrect implementations. TDD requires automated tests written before production code; those tests initially fail and then guide iterative development and safe refactoring. AI-driven coding moves engineering rigor away from line-by-line coding and demands new practices to retain discipline.
Read at Theregister
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]