About a developer saying generative AI coding tools and agents don't work for them.
Has this happened?
Yes 80 (59%)Not sure 24 (18%)No 31 (23%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About a developer saying generative AI coding tools and agents don't work for them.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
The true test is can it write tests? Ask the dev if they use it to write tests. The answers to #1 is it can't really. The answer to #2 should be no.
AI can write some tests, but it can't design thorough ones. Perhaps the best way to use AI is to have a human writing thorough and well documented tests as part of TDD, asking AI to write code to meet those tests, then thoroughly reviewing that code.
AI saves me just a little time by writing boilerplate stuff for me, just one step above how IDEs have been providing generated getters and setters.