Judging coding agents by whether their unit tests pass is like promoting an engineer for the same reason.

Added to korrents 31 Oct 2026 · How quotes work · Something wrong? Tell us

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• A language-agnostic conformance suite is the most powerful thing you can hand a coding agent, because the whole instruction becomes: write code until these tests pass. SWSimon Willison19 Mar 2026software quality
• A passing test suite is not evidence that the software works, so an agent must also be made to start the thing and exercise it the way a person would. SWSimon Willison19 Mar 2026software quality
• Adding a config option so nobody breaks compounds into permutations no test suite can cover, because it is infinitely harder to evolve software that has users. PSPeter Steinberger10 Aug 2026software quality
• Agentic code review raises the floor but cannot be trusted, because the model reading the code is the same model that wrote it, and it will tell you the code is great. DHDex Horthy15 Jul 2026software quality
• Aiming for superhuman code quality may not be a realistic path. ATAdam Tornhill30 Jun 2026software quality

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