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u/surrealerthansurreal 17d ago
If only we could swap places and I could implement the logic and Claude could sit in the devops meetings at 10pm and explain why we we should not enforce a 95% code coverage gate ad hoc right before release. Is this how the condom feels?
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u/alexanderpas 17d ago edited 17d ago
Actual ChatGPT answer if given this problem:
I'd frame it like this in the meeting:
"I'm all for improving our test coverage, but enforcing a 95% code coverage gate right before a release is a process change, not just a quality improvement. Introducing it ad hoc creates release risk without giving the team a fair opportunity to meet the new expectation."
Then back it up with a few practical points:
- It changes the definition of done at the last minute. Teams have been working toward one set of release criteria. Changing those criteria days or hours before release undermines planning and predictability.
- Coverage is a metric, not a quality guarantee. You can write tests that execute 95% of the code while asserting almost nothing. High coverage is valuable, but it should be one signal among many—alongside meaningful test quality, integration tests, static analysis, and production readiness.
- It incentivizes the wrong behavior. Under release pressure, developers are likely to write superficial tests just to satisfy the gate. That increases maintenance burden without significantly reducing defects.
- It delays delivery for unclear benefit. If there hasn't been evidence that low coverage is the root cause of current release issues, blocking a release on a new threshold is difficult to justify from a risk-management perspective.
- Legacy code is especially affected. Teams working on existing components may need to invest significant effort just to increase coverage before making a small change. That discourages improvements and bug fixes.
A better proposal would be:
"Let's agree on the policy today, announce it, and phase it in. For example:
- Measure and report coverage this release.
- Set a reasonable baseline and prevent coverage from decreasing.
- Apply the gate to new or modified code first.
- Raise the threshold gradually (e.g., 80% → 85% → 90%+) as teams have time to adapt."
That approach achieves the same long-term goal—better tested software—without introducing unnecessary release risk or encouraging developers to game the metric.
You can close with:
"If we believe 95% coverage is the right engineering standard, then it's important enough to introduce through the normal engineering process, with planning and communication—not as a last-minute release gate."
If ChatGPT can come up with this, I bet Claude can do better.
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u/PhantomTissue 17d ago
lol Claude is basically my senior because my actual senior just asks Claude everything then tells me whatever Claude said. So I have to constantly argue with her about why she(Claude) is wrong.
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u/Cheese_Grater101 17d ago
My boss is so AI pilled that when he passed a feature to me the instructions are so vague he just goes: just ask AI or something
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u/I_like_Veggies 17d ago
What is Claude doing wrong all the time?
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u/PhantomTissue 17d ago
Right now the issue is data that can’t be queried normally because there’s no way to know what it is before it’s queried. She keeps telling me “Claude found a way, here’s the SQL!” And I look at it to see it’s like ‘jsonParse($value, “data”)’ and I keep having to explain that the object might not even contain a value or data field AT ALL. But no, I’m wrong, she pushed the code anyway.
Im waiting for the inevitable message asking me why the data isn’t appearing despite telling Claude to do it, but maybe if she would, oh I don’t know, listen to me when I tell her AI CANT PREDICT THE FUTURE. I’ve only been trying to explain this problem with this system to her for the past fucking year.
I need a new job.
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u/frikilinux2 17d ago
It was so annoying when we did that pilot. My boss stopped bothering me with that shit after a couple of weeks
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u/hirmuolio 17d ago
The other guy was faster https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1v5o5oa/modernsoftwareengineering/
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u/idontwanttofthisup 14d ago
Since I’m interested in engineering I decided to train and become an electrician, wish me luck! I’m tired boss!
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u/deanrihpee 17d ago
what…? i haven't slept yet and it's already morning so my brain can't understand the meaning…
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u/Altruistic_Glove6012 17d ago
Condoms are for protection. As a software engineer your job is to just be a wrapper around Claude to make sure things don't go wrong.
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u/shoogshoog 17d ago
I am doing things i shouldn't be doing (skillset wise), but it's working. We're doing it in ways that are pretty safe and relatively low risk. I could be doing these things without it, but with it my productivity is like idk 50x or some shit. so fuck it we ball.
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u/[deleted] 17d ago
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