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When writing about Property-Based testing, I found they were much more solid and comprehensive than usual tests, due to their more general (properties vs examples). They weren’t used because they felt more complex and time-intensive to write, despite being shorter and having to change them less.

I’m still interested to see how it’ll unfold, but despite shipping code faster and using more general forms of specs when engineering with LLMs, the testing methods used never made use of the gained time nor of the more general spec. Instead the trend is to just generate more examples and review.

I’m not sure what may lie behind these observations, which goals and pressure gradients shape them, but it feels funny/interesting that the gains appear to be “reinvested” in specific ways that reinforce existing tradeoffs, rather than seizing opportunities for a new balance.

Part of it just makes me feel the stuff I wished I could see grow never really mattered to the “group” (see how nobody even looks that way even when there’d be more room now than ever!) and it’s a very funny feeling to contend with. A bit disconcerting to see the distance grow, but better to know?