Re:AI is forcing us to pay off 40 years of technical debt
by latentsea on Thursday November 05, 2026 @04:59AM
(#50377316)
Seems like a culture problem at both ends of the org.
Re:AI is forcing us to pay off 40 years of technical debt
by hinkley on Thursday November 05, 2026 @02:17PM
(#50383175)
It’s a pretty common failure mode in my experience. Keep management out of testing as long as you can.
Re:AI is forcing us to pay off 40 years of technical debt
by latentsea on Thursday November 05, 2026 @09:14PM
(#50387288)
Keep shitty tests out. PRs with vacuous tests should be rejected. You can have high coverage and good tests. These aren't mutually exclusive.
Re:AI is forcing us to pay off 40 years of technical debt
by hinkley on Thursday November 05, 2026 @02:16PM
(#50383165)
I’ve seen that behavior but it usually doesn’t kick in until the mandate 90%, so that’s a shame. Usually I push back on it being a rule because if you have low coverage, you have a team that’s not good at automated testing, and forcing them to write a lot of tests before they’ve gotten good at it always ends poorly. But typically nobody listens and the shitshow begins.
Every 6 months there was a new testing initiative, which seemed to all be responded to by writing wrappers that returned true to the test automation system we were ordered to use.