Why AI will never replace human code review • Hacker News Board

Re: Why AI will never replace human code review

#21

Post by Legend2440 » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 9:35 PM UTC

UncleEntity wrote: post #15

shalmanese wrote: post #5

Rory Sutherland calls this the "doorman fallacy". We look at a doorman and might naively think their function is to open doors so if we can replace their function, we can replace the person. Then we build an automation, fire the doorman and subsequently discover the doorman was responsible for a multitude of social tasks, like taking in the mail, co-ordinating services, providing small tasks for the residents etc. an…

Probably be more aptly called the "elevator operator fallacy". The elevator operator ensures the safety and security of the passengers, makes sure the elevator is properly maintained and assists the elderly and disabled along with numerous other important tasks. People believe the elevator operator is only responsible for operating the actuating lever and mistakenly believe they can be automated away without fully un…

That said; we don’t have elevator operators anymore, and we get along just fine. I don’t miss them.

Re: Why AI will never replace human code review

#22

Post by davely » Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 10:05 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #19

shalmanese wrote: post #5

Rory Sutherland calls this the "doorman fallacy". We look at a doorman and might naively think their function is to open doors so if we can replace their function, we can replace the person. Then we build an automation, fire the doorman and subsequently discover the doorman was responsible for a multitude of social tasks, like taking in the mail, co-ordinating services, providing small tasks for the residents etc. an…

> Similarly, we think the purpose of code review must obviously be for reviewing code until we look deeper and understand the sociological purposes of code review. The truth of this was made clear to me when everyone started doing asynchronous online "code reviews" where the reviewers are just looking at the code (in theory, anyway). That alone eliminated the majority of the benefit of code reviews, where the author…

One thing I enjoy when working on a new feature is to schedule a team call for me to walk through the code, detailing the changes or improvements I've made, thought processes and overall just give better context into what the wall of text they are going to review is all about.

Likewise, I enjoy when colleagues take the time to do the same with their own PRs. It's something I've tried to promote, but I think everyone is just in a default mode of ship-ship-ship, so people aren't eager to have another meeting to attend.

(Ideally, we shouldn't be submitting PRs that are so huge, but sometimes this isn't always feasible.)

Re: Why AI will never replace human code review

#23

Post by codeman001 » Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 12:54 PM UTC

I used AI code review tools but agree It would never replace human IMO.

Here is why because of 2 golden rules of Code Reviews in tech why AI can't understand or trained on:

- AI can't see always and remember it’s a human being on the other end of the code and review. - AI could be brutal and will miss the good intent like a senior member who is helping the junior.

It goes without saying that the key benefit of doing code reviews is to make the code better and fix issues.