Developers put off tests for complex and changing code
Developers describe writing and maintaining tests as tedious, especially for complex business rules, large projects, and code that requires extensive mocks. When the work gets postponed or shortcuts weaken test coverage, tests can lose their value as a reliable check on changes. AI coding tools are already used as a workaround, but the evidence also points to friction around keeping generated tests useful and maintainable.
For software developers maintaining business logic. Mentioned from May 2018 to Sep 2026 on GitHub and Hacker News.
18 different people described this problem in 17 separate discussions.
- Indie fit
- 5.0/10
- Pain
- 5.4/10
- Frequency
- 10.0/10
- Willingness to pay
- 0.0/10
- Momentum
- 5.6/10
- Who pays
- Professionals
- Competition
- High
- Build difficulty
- Medium
What people said
Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.
Aiming for 70% coverage meant that a few thousand unit tests were needed. I wrote up a technical plan with Claude code and I was about to set it to work when I thought, hang on, this would be very easy to split into separate work, let's try this subagent thing
Regardless, it's tedious and time consuming and shortcuts get taken then value of the whole thing falls apart and running the unit tests just becomes like a ritual with no real meaning/impact
chasd00 on Hacker NewsAug 2025
Build brief
See what to build and who will buy it
- 2 product ideas with the smallest useful version and pricing
- 4 places to find your first customers
- 17 more quotes from people who have this problem
- Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks