alt Hacker NewsTest first programming has its use and can be quite peoductive.
I believe the issue with „TDD“ is the notion that it should drive design and more importantly that it‘s always applied. I disagree with both if those.
Given a problem where test first makes sense, I prefer roughly this procedure:
1. Figure out assumptions and guarantees.
2. Design an interface
3. Produce some input and output data (coupled)
4. Write a test that uses the above
5. Implement the interface/function
The order of 4 and 5 aren‘t all that important actually.
My experience is that an AI is pretty good at 3, at least once you defined one example, it will just produce a ton of data for you that is in large parts useful and correct.
Step 4 is very easy and short. Again, AI will just do it.
Step 5 is a wash. If it doesn‘t get it in a few tries, I turn it off and implement myself. Sometimes it gets it but produces low quality code, then I often turn it off as well.
Step 1-2 are the parts that I want to do myself, because they are the significant pieces of my mental model of a program.
I believe this is also how evolutionary/genetic programs usually work if you squint. They operate under a set of constraints that are designed by a human (researcher).
You and I are in agreement for the most part.
Especially steps 1-2 are not things easy to hand off in the first place.
Step 6 it's important: reflect on your work and challenge it. I'm distinguishing this from 4 because you need to take the part of a strong adversary.
I'm not quite sure this is hire evolutionary programs work, having written plenty myself. I'd lean on no. I'm certain this is not the fill of my work as a researcher.
As a researcher you can't just put ideas together and follow some algorithm. There's no clear way to continue except in the incremental works. Don't get me wrong, those can do a lot of good, but they'll never get you anything groundbreaking. To do really novel things you need to understand details of what went on before. It's extremely beneficial to reproduce because you want to verify. When doing that you want to look carefully at assumptions and find what you're taking for granted. Maybe that's step 1 for you but step 1 is ongoing. The vast majority of people I meet fail to check their assumptions at even a basic level. Very few people want to play that game of 20 questions over and over being highly pedantic. Instead I hear "from first principles" and know what's about to follow is not a set of axioms. Carl Sagan bakes a pie from first principles. That's too far tbh, but you should probably mill your own flower (and that's still a long way from first)