this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2025
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I personally think unit tests are the worst application of AI. Tests are there to ensure the code is correct, so ideally the dev would write the tests to verify that the AI-generated code is correct.
I personally don't use AI to write code, since writing code is the easiest and quickest part of my job. I instead use it to generate examples of using a new library, give me comparisons of different options, etc, and then I write the code after that. Basically, I use it as a replacement for a search engine/blog posts.
What model are you using? I've had such a radically different experience but I've only bothered with the latest models. The old ones weren't even worth trying with
I'll have to check, we have a few models hosted at our company and I forget the exact versions and whatnot. They're relatively recent, but not the highest end since we need to host them locally.
But the issue here isn't directly related to which model it is, but to the way LLMs work. They cannot reason, they can only give believable output. If the goal is code coverage, it'll get coverage, but not necessarily be well designed.
If both the logic and the tests are automated, humans will be lazy and miss stuff. If only the logic is generated, humans can treat the code as a black box and write good tests that way. Humans will be lazy with whatever is automated, so if I have to pick one to be hand written, it'll be the code that ensures the logic is correct.
We're mandated to use it at my work. For unit tests it can really go wild and it'll write thousands of lines of tests to cover a single file/class for instance whereas a developer would probably only write a fourth as much. You have to be specific to get any decent output from them like "write a test for this function and use inputs x and y and the expected output is z"
Personally I like writing tests too and I think through what test cases I need based on what the code is supposed to do. Maybe if there are annoying mocks that I need to create I'll let the AI do that part or something.
Generating tests like that would take longer than writing the tests myself...
Nobody is going to thoroughly review thousands of lines of test code.