One thing that I think would be cool, and that could perhaps be good starting point, is a TDD agent. How I imagine this working:
User (who is a developer) writes tests, and a description of the desired application. The agent attempts to build the application, compiles the code, runs the tests, and automatically feeds any compiler errors and test failures back to agent so that it can fix it's own mistakes without input of the user.
Based on my experience of current programming agents, I imagine it'll take the agent a couple of attempts to get an application that compiles and passes all the tests. What would be really great to see is an agent (with a companion application probably) that automates all those retries in a good way.
i imagine the hardest parts will be to interpret compiler output, and (this is where things get real tricky) test output, and how to translate that into code changes in the existing code base.
Yeah, this is a great workflow! What's more, agents are particularly good at writing tests, since they're simpler and mostly linear, so they can even help with that part.
As to your point of automating retries, with my last prototype I played a lot with having agents do multiple parallel implementations, and then pick the first one that works, or lets you choose (or even have another agent choose).
Have you tried any tools that have this workflow down, or at least approach it?
I have not! But I've often been frustrated when an agent gives me code that doesn't compile, and I keep thinking that would be a solvable problem. One computer program should be able to talk to the other
User (who is a developer) writes tests, and a description of the desired application. The agent attempts to build the application, compiles the code, runs the tests, and automatically feeds any compiler errors and test failures back to agent so that it can fix it's own mistakes without input of the user.
Based on my experience of current programming agents, I imagine it'll take the agent a couple of attempts to get an application that compiles and passes all the tests. What would be really great to see is an agent (with a companion application probably) that automates all those retries in a good way.
i imagine the hardest parts will be to interpret compiler output, and (this is where things get real tricky) test output, and how to translate that into code changes in the existing code base.