Is AI good at writing code?

It is strong at well-specified, verifiable tasks — writing tests, refactoring with a stated invariant, explaining unfamiliar code. It is weaker at architectural judgement and at anything where the requirements are ambiguous.

What is the best prompt for code review?

Name the specific problem classes you want checked — race conditions, unhandled errors, N+1 queries, boundary conditions — rather than asking for a general review, which returns mostly style notes.

How do I get AI to write better tests?

Ask it to enumerate the edge cases first and then write one test per case. Asking directly for tests usually produces only happy-path coverage.

Should I trust AI-generated code?

Read every line before shipping it. The dangerous failure is not code that crashes — it is code that runs and is subtly wrong.

Coding

AI Prompts for Coding: Reviews, Refactors, Tests and Debugging

2026-07-28 · Coding

AI is most useful in coding when the task has a verifiable answer: does the test pass, does the type check, does the bug reproduce. Prompts that lean on verification produce far better results than prompts that ask for opinions.

Code review

Ask for specific classes of problem rather than "review this". Naming the categories — race conditions, unhandled errors, N+1 queries, off-by-one — produces concrete findings instead of style commentary.

Refactoring

State the invariant that must hold: "refactor this to remove the nested callbacks; behaviour and public API must not change". Without a stated invariant the model will happily improve the code and break it.

Test generation

Ask for the edge cases first, then the tests. "List the edge cases for this function, then write a test for each" reliably beats "write tests", which tends to produce three happy-path cases.

Debugging

Give the model the error, the relevant code, and what you already ruled out. The last part matters most — without it you get the same three obvious suggestions every time.

Explaining unfamiliar code

Ask for the data flow rather than a line-by-line description: "trace what happens to the request object from entry to response". Line-by-line explanations restate the code; data flow explains it.

The rule that matters

Never ship generated code you have not read. The failure mode is not code that crashes — it is code that looks right, runs, and is subtly wrong.