My experience is the opposite. It’s so much easier to have an LLM grind the last mile annoyances (e.g. installing and debugging compilation bullshit on a specific raspberry pi + unmaintained 3p library versions.)
I can focus on the parts I love, including writing them all by hand, and push the “this isn’t fun, I’d rather do something else” bits to a minion.
That’s not really the part I’m talking about. My gut says that if tests are a blocker for weekend projects, people just don’t bother writing them. I certainly wouldn’t imagine them taking much longer to code than the core functionality.
In my experience, which seems to resonate with a lot of people, AI quickly stands up really useful boilerplate and very convenient purpose-built scaffolding… but is a lot less useful helping you solve actual problems in a way that makes sense to people that have those problems. Especially if you’re using a less-mainstream language or some other component.