Test-Driven Development with AI: The Right Way to Code Using Generative AI

How often do you generative AI to write your code? What about writing your tests? You might be doing it backwards.

Unit tests are the worst. Don’t get me wrong, they are an invaluable part of any CI pipeline or automation. But man are they a pain to write.

Most developers I know, myself included, like to dive straight into code and would love to hand it over as soon as it’s functionally complete. But as those of us who have ever written something we have to support in production know, you can’t do that.

Alas, unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests all need to be written to ensure that your code completely satisfies the business problem, covers all the edge cases, and is set up to maintain backward compatibility. It’s so important, in fact, that there’s an entire coding paradigm called test-driven development (TDD).

The premise behind TDD is that you write all your unit tests before you write any code. If you build your unit tests out completely making sure you cover all your business requirements, then you can test as you go. As you write the code your unit tests will stop failing, assuring you that you did what you were supposed to do.