testing 4

I run AI coding agents inside a Docker container for safety. The setup is dev.dockerfile: builds the image dev.sh: launches the container with the right mounts and env vars dev.test.sh: verifies everything works. I wrote them semi-manually and it had bugs. I had GitHub Copilot + GPT-5.4 High update tests and actually run the commands to verify the setup. Here’s what I learned from the process. 1. Make it easier to review. The first run took long. I pressed Ctrl+C, told Copilot to “add colored output, timing, and a live status line”. Then I re-ran. Instead of a bunch of ERROR: lines, I now got a color-coded output with timing + a live status line showing what’s running. ...

I use Codex to write tools while I walk. Here are merged PRs: Add editable system prompt Standardize toast notifications Persist form fields Fix SVG handling in page2md Add Google Tasks exporter Add Markdown table to CSV tool Replace simple alerts with toasts Add CSV joiner tool Add SpeakMD tool This added technical debt. I spent four hours fixing the AI generated tests and code. What mistakes did it make? Inconsistency. It flips between execCommand("copy") and clipboard.writeText(). It wavers on timeouts (50 ms vs 100 ms). It doesn’t always run/fix test cases. Missed edge cases. I switched <div> to <form>. My earlier code didn’t have a type="button", so clicks reloaded the page. It missed that. It also left scripts as plain <script> instead of <script type="module"> which was required. Limited experimentation. My failed with a HTTP 404 because the common/ directory wasn’t served. I added console.logs to find this. Also, happy-dom won’t handle multiple exports instead of a single export { ... }. I wrote code to verify this. Coding agents didn’t run such experiments. What can we do about it? Three things could have helped me: ...

In the last few days, I’m coding with Jules (Google’s coding agent) while walking. Here are a few pull requests merged so far: Add features via an issue Write test cases Add docs Why bother? My commute used to be audiobook time. Great for ideas, useless for deliverables. With ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude.ai, etc. I was able to have them write code, but I still needed to run, test, and deploy. Jules (and tools like GitHub Copilot Coding Agent, OpenAI Codex, PR Agent, etc. which are not currently free for everyone) lets you chat clone a repo, write code in a new branch, test it, and push. I can deploy that with a click. ...

Yesterday (15 Oct 2024), I used Cursor to code more than I ever have. (Doing's how we learn, I guess. Not just reading.) DateUsage05-10-20241506-10-20242707-10-20248708-10-20241609-10-202410-10-20244211-10-20242412-10-20245713-10-20241514-10-20242815-10-2024186 This was mainly to create and publish 2 libraries on npm over 6 hours: ...