Is Testing Dead? and The Younger Generation (of open source maintainers) These Days!

What A Lot Of Things: Tech talk from a human perspective

In Episode 28, Ian and Ash wade into the treacherous waters of AI-generated testing strategies, with Ian demonstrating how LLMs can now create comprehensive (but perhaps suspiciously mundane) test documentation with just a few commands. The pair debate whether testers should fear for their jobs or simply laugh at AI's confident yet risk-blind approach to testing. Meanwhile, Ash ponders the BBC's hand-wringing over the future of open source software, questioning whether the current gatekeepers might need to stop finger-wagging at younger developers and instead create more welcoming environments for volunteers.

Between discussions of 960Mbps internet connections, mind flayers in Baldur's Gate, and the correct pronunciation of "Ethernet," our intrepid hosts manage to deliver a rollicking episode that proves testing isn't dead - it's just a zombie looking for brains.

Links

• Simon Willison's blog, and his post about how "o3-mini is really good at writing internal documentation".
• Examples of o3-mini's work: Test Strategy for Ilkley Live and Ilkley Live New Developer Onboarding Guide
• Simon's `llm` and `files-to-prompt` command line tools
• We'll Give It A Go - The Spooky Men's Chorale (Youtube)
• The Cursor IDE as used by Ian.
• Ben Franklin's Famous 'Liberty, Safety' Quote Lost Its Context In 21st Century (NPR)
• Content Management Systems - Contentful, Sanity and Strapi.
• Douglas Adams quotation on age and technology
• Openreach Full Fibre Broadband
• Things Ian never wants to end: his game of Baldurs Gate 3 and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
• BBC News: Will young developers take on key open source software?
• Will Young...
• Unix tools - `curl` and `wget`.
• The Register: Mixing Rust and C in Linux likened to cancer by kernel maintainer
• The naming of `git`.