Coding agents write defensive code with overly broad exception catches, and review agents still LGTM it

srchvrs · x · 2026-09-28

prajdabre vents about coding agents' poor test quality and over-defensive code: everything gets wrapped in try-except clauses catching exceptions so broadly that failures become silent — and a review agent will still read it and say "magnificent, LGTM."

Quoting that, srchvrs adds nuance: he finds agent-written Python quite good overall, but intent drift is real — they implement what's not needed and skip what's necessary. As he puts it, you can't extract 1000 bits of code from 1 bit of input without heavy assumptions.

Related event: Developers Slam AI Coding Agents for Poor Unit Tests and Over-Defensive Code(2 posts)→

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