Uncle Bob becoming even worse:
2026-07-24 11:58 UTC
Replies (40)
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@BlackEco@lemmy.blackeco.com 2026-07-24 12:08
Inb4 the agents change the tests to pass the CI.
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@rtxn@lemmy.world 2026-07-24 12:15
Sounds like a cryptobro peddling some shitcoin claiming that it’s impossible to get scammed because “code is law” four seconds before the coin’s value drops to zero.
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@9point6@lemmy.world 2026-07-24 12:16
Bob is a shithead
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@onlinepersona@programming.dev 2026-07-24 12:17
Is this a joke?
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@MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2026-07-24 12:23
Actually great. Boss with the shares is satisfied, because he met tge quota. Customers are satisfied, because tge code is good enough. It might still not be efficient or maintainable, even have some in the tests unaccounted-for (because they’re ridiculous) errors. But aside from that…
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@Feyd@programming.dev 2026-07-24 12:37
Uncle Bob has always been a hack whose advice made code less maintainable.
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@dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de 2026-07-24 13:35
So in other words he spends weeks to write extra tests so that the agent can save him days of coding.
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@HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world 2026-07-24 13:36
I’m significantly older than you. I started coding in the late 60’s Yeah, appeal to tangentially related experience, age and arrogance aren’t a way to inspire confidence in your work. We live in the perfect times to display that experience, age and arrogance haven’t been working in almost any field, from politics to LLM development. We’ve yet to witness any system that operates well, while also eliminating human oversight. It doesn’t matter the guard rails you put in place. They’re only as strong as your personal ability to evaluate your own product, which itself is a conflict of interest.
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@HeartyOfGlass@piefed.social 2026-07-24 13:39
“I stopped reading code because I was too busy writing a gauntlet of unit tests” Sounds like 100x productivity to me.
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@kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 2026-07-24 14:17
He fails to mention that he has AI also generate and do all of those tests, which means, A) he has no quality supervision over he quality supervision, and B) he’s probably spending 3 times as much on tokens used for generating and running tests than he is already using on code generation. That’s only going to be sustainable while these token remain cheap, which won’t be for much longer, my guy.
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@ranzispa@mander.xyz 2026-07-24 14:38
In my experience, agents tend to write functions significantly longer than 12 lines. Where’s your clean code Bob?
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@bookmeat@fedinsfw.app 2026-07-24 14:42
We recently had an example of this. See Bun vs Zig. Even if your LLM doesn’t have meaningless tests and assertions, those will not have 100% coverage on any non-trivial code base.
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@WesternInfidels@feddit.online 2026-07-24 14:54
Look, I don’t care what you do with your gherkin, Uncle Bob, but you do it in private, OK?
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@Naich@piefed.world 2026-07-24 14:59
Holy technical debt, uncle Bob.
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@Epp@lemmus.org 2026-07-24 15:10
Glad to see the angry mob is alive and well on Lemmy. Don’t hate AI? Lemmy users will find reasons to hate you.
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@robert.meyer86@piefed.social 2026-07-24 15:18
I do a lot of vibe coding, but even I know this is bullshit.
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@MirrorGiraffe@piefed.social 2026-07-24 15:20
If it’s his own products and no-one else needs to work that code I don’t see a big problem with it, but the ways I’ve seen agents treat a code base just to pass tests is horrible.
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@fargeol@lemmy.world 2026-07-24 15:44
So, basically, he just reinvented constraint programming
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@Lojcs@piefed.social 2026-07-24 15:51
Who’s this guy?
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@fubarx@lemmy.world 2026-07-24 16:04
It’s all that gherkin testing, isn’t it?
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@ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 2026-07-24 16:24
So… test driven agent developments?
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@carrylex@lemmy.world 2026-07-24 16:39
Translates to: “I created this (unit) test that tests code that does not exist yet…” Alright AI bro keep your copium…
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@goatinspace@feddit.org 2026-07-24 17:10
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@JakenVeina@midwest.social 2026-07-24 15:40
I choose to believe this is satire. Also that this man holds no significant position of prominence within the industry. /cope
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@anon_8675309@lemmy.world 2026-07-24 17:25
He’s done so much to enshitify the industry.
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@TomMasz@piefed.social 2026-07-24 18:04
So he does more work so he can do less work? Am I reading that right?
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@douglasg14b@lemmy.world 2026-07-24 18:22
None of this actually proves that they aren’t writing slop. It just proves that the slop that they’ve written passes your tests.
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@Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-07-24 18:57
I don’t code any more, only write gazillions of tests smugface.jpg
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@humanspiral@lemmy.ca 2026-07-24 18:59
gherkin tests?
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@outerspace@lemmy.zip 2026-07-24 19:40
It just means he is not doing anything important, in other words he doesnt have any specific thing in mind and it doesn’t matter if it works exactly right or not. It looks like it’s working and for some people that’s enough.
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@OfCourseNot@fedia.io 2026-07-24 16:01
Has this guy ever even written any code? Can anyone name a piece of software he's worked on? Isn't he like a self-help author for programmers?
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@MrKoyun@lemmy.world 2026-07-24 20:00
Does he think a single AI model, perhaps in the same instance, will start to get better when put through “hard testing” in his “gauntlet”?
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@NotAnonymousAtAll@feddit.org 2026-07-24 20:09
Sure this is bad, but is it really “becoming even worse” after he already publicly declared support for Trump?
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@realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 2026-07-24 20:14
Even if it passes every test, it can be shit code that is hard to read and extend
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@Evotech@lemmy.world 2026-07-24 20:26
The tests that the AI wrote? :D
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@SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world 2026-07-24 20:31
People don’t want to hear it, but this should be more common practice especially for human written code, and it’s best if someone specializes in doing this sort of QA testing specifically.
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@SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 2026-07-24 20:47
OK boomer
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@Jankatarch@lemmy.world 2026-07-24 21:00
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@LodeMike@lemmy.today 2026-07-24 21:10
If you do all that properly using an LLM is a waste of time.
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@cbazero@programming.dev 2026-07-24 21:38
Why am I not surprised that he is a big proponent of AI coding considering his background …