Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused. Are you criticising the article, or simply expressing concern for what may happen? The context suggests the former, but your criticisms bear no relation to the linked content. If anything, your edict to "write tests first" is even more succinctly expressed as "Red/green TDD".
But it is related, isn't it? I wrote "...each swearing they have the secret sauce and the right incantations...". Now compare it to ""Use red/green TDD" is a pleasingly succinct way to get better results out of a coding agent." Doesn't it sound like the "right incantation"? That's the point of LLMs, they can understand (*) intent. You'd get the same result saying "do tdd" or "do the stuff everyone says they do but th…
It sounds like you have a misunderstanding of what LLMs are/can do.
Imagine that you only get one first interaction with a person that you're having try to build something and you're trying to minimize the amount back and forth.
For humans this can be something like an instruction manual. If you've put together more than a few things you quickly realize that instruction manuals vary highly in quality, some will make your life much easier and other will leave you confused.
Lastly, (human) intent is a social construct. The more closely you're aligned with the entity in question the more it's apt to fully comprehend your intent. This is partially the reason why when you throw a project at workers in your office they tend to get it right, and when you throw it towards the overseas team you'll have to check in a lot more to ensure it's not going off the rails.