Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by anthonypasq 9 hours ago
are we just re-inventing playwright tests except 10x slower and infinity times more expensive?

i feel like im going insane

2 comments

since the rise of agentic coding tools, it feels like we're in a new "eternal september" of people discovering ui end-to-end test automation.
Also the merits of documentation and specs. It’s been eye-opening to see the subset of developers who were almost disdainful about writing documentation for their colleagues but are now tripping over themselves to do so for their clanker.
Agents read the docs. People don't. That's the underlying reason.
> People don't.

People falling all over themselves to write docs for their pile-of-linear-algebra-with-a-smiley-face-painted-on-it [0] don't read the docs, no. People who give a shit about writing solid software that doesn't get them paged at three in the damn morning do.

[0] The face is there to provide social-trustworthiness signals to engage the human pack-bonding instinct, natch.

Clanker is the new excuse to use hard R against something you don't like.
That’s a rather stunning comparison: racism is a problem because it’s unfairly treating sentient beings but a pile of linear algebra is not even sentient, much less your peer. That’s part of why I used the term: “agent” isn’t current because agents have, well, agency and can be held accountable.

https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/5/26/clankers/

Positing an equivalence between a dismissive term for AI bots and a racial slur against black people is, like, super racist.
People are rediscovering everything. Some people have proposed using a more formal language to tell the AI precisely what code to write. That's a compiler.
Well playwright tests used to be called puppeteer tests which used to be called selenium tests, so you tell me.
Ťhose are all technology variations of “automated web ui tests”, which is a subset of “automated ui tests”, which is itself almost (but not quite exactly) a subset of “automated user acceptance tests”, none of which are new categories.