Re:ChatGPT agent: bridging research and action
by bo1024 on Thursday July 17, 2025 @05:43PM
(#44598576)
It sounds like you’re saying that good tests are enough to ensure good code even when programmers are unskilled and just rewrite until they pass the tests. I’m very skeptical.
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Re:ChatGPT agent: bridging research and action
by freeone3000 on Thursday July 17, 2025 @06:05PM
(#44598762)
It may not be a provable take, but it’s also not absurd. This is the concept behind modern TDD (as seen in frameworks like cucumber):
Someone with product knowledge writes the tests in a DSL
Someone skilled writes the verbs to make the DSL function correctly
And from there, any amount of skill is irrelevant: either the tests pass, or they fail. One could hook up a markov chain to a javascript sourcebook and eventually get working code out.
Re:ChatGPT agent: bridging research and action
by collingreen on Thursday July 17, 2025 @06:38PM
(#44599083)
> One could hook up a markov chain to a javascript sourcebook and eventually get working code out.
Can they? Either the dsl is so detailed and specific as to be just code with extra steps or there is a lot of ground not covered by the test cases with landmines that a million monkeys with typewriters could unwittingly step on.
The bugs that exist while the tests pass are often the most brutal - first to find and understand and secondly when they occasionally reveal that a fundamental assumption was wrong.