AI code assistants promise speed, but too often they lead to code-and-fix loops, review fatigue, and high maintenance costs. Charted Coding is a structured recipe for AI-assisted development: start with a lightweight design doc (the menu), set up scaffolding and WIP code (mise en place), then let tests guide the AI step by step. In this 20-minute talk, you’ll see how to keep AI from vibe-coding your project into chaos, while leveraging MCP servers and tools like WallabyJS to smoothen the workflow. The result: maintainable, predictable code your whole team can trust.
What you will learn
• Writing readable and maintainable tests
• Writing tests that focus on behavior rather than implementation details
• Writing future-proof tests that survive migrations and refactorings
• Choosing the right test size
• “Mocking” without suffering using Fakes and Object Mothers
• An all-you-can-eat buffet of tips and tricks to help you adopt a Pragmatic Testing Strategy
Agenda
💻 Hands-on Exercise: First Test
• Let’s write our first test by instinct — then dissect what works and what doesn’t
👨🏻🏫 The Testing Pain
• Developers hate testing: Why, and how do we fix that?
• The Development Time Perception Bias
• What’s wrong with Unit vs. Integration taxonomy?
• Narrow vs. Wide
👨🏻🏫 Vitest
• Why Vitest?
• Pros, cons, and the future
• Migration path from Karma or Jest
👨🏻🏫 Component Testing
• Isolated vs. Shallow vs. Integration
• TestBed vs. Testing Library: What to pick from each?
💻 Hands-on Exercises: TDD & Component Testing
• Progressive Test-Driven Development
• Tips & tricks for precise and maintainable tests
• Future-proof testing with DOM-distancing and Gloves
• Zoneless-ready testing
• Debugging techniques
👨🏻🏫 Test Doubles & “Mocking”
• When, why, how, and where to “mock”
• Fake it till you mock it: picking the right Test Double
• Type-safe and maintainable doubles
• High confidence with contract testing
💻 Hands-on Exercises: Test Doubles & “Mocking”
• Narrowing down tests with Fakes
👨🏻🏫 Playwright Component Testing with Testronaut
• How is Testronaut different from anything else?
• Component Testing with Testronaut
• Using test doubles
• Debugging
• Visual regression testing that scales
👨🏻🏫 Building your Pragmatic Testing Strategy
• What to test?
• Which tool to use?
• What is the right size for a System Under Test?
• Which strategy for legacy code?
🙋 Q&A
🎁 [Bonus] Charted Coding: AI-Assisted TDD
• Leveraging AI from design doc to tidy code with more TDD and less review fatigue
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