TDD and LLMs

Things are weird. Just a couple years ago programming was a thing I did...

2025-11-17

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Things are weird. Just a couple years ago programming was a thing I did and I could improve at. I’d learn more patterns, gain some tricks, have a better mental model, and boom. Improvement.

I could witness my improvement when I paired with someone. I could change how I improved by trying a new approach to state, build some animations or experiment with a new language. It’s was pretty grand.

There was a time when I’d read a blog and type the letters line by line. At the end I understood a different idea. I haven’t done that in a while. LLMs play a big role in that.

Getting good was like playing a sport. You put reps in. You improve. The game has changed however. LLMs now make certain parts of the job trivial. So far, I’ve got one pattern that works and feels good.

Pairing with an LLM, there are some differences. LLMs write a lot of code, fast. But they’re very obedient. When I pair with an LLM I let it know well write one test at a time and I’ll approve each test then ask it to pass the test and I’ll approve those changes.