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Maybe we shouldn't be reviewing all this code

martinfowler.com

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Re: Maybe we shouldn't be reviewing all this code

#41

Post by sashank_1509 »

How about we just hire humans and let them code without AI, then we don't have this issue! Every piece of valuable software to date was written this way.

In before, “you’ll be left behind crowd”, I agree, most of what we call SWE in 2026 will probably just be done by agents, at which point I’m not sure why humans are even reading it. Stop bottlenecking your agent when it’s building the nth slop website.

But if you agree, we will still need human intelligence for some tasks, then in my experience it is best used as a generator, not reviewer and ideally unmolested by LLM Intelligence. The amount of creativity you should delegate is 0.

Re: Maybe we shouldn't be reviewing all this code

#42

Post by em-bee »

wgreenberg wrote: post #8

i do find it deeply funny that a polemic against peer review has an AI generated header image with easily identifiable problems (notebook contents upside down, one child is about to cut her hand with scissors, the other is building a geometrically impossible "lego" structure). if only it had been reviewed by someone else before publishing!

how is the lego structure impossible? it is unstable because it's made only of 1-stud bricks. and there are some non existent multi colored bricks in use, but those could theoretically be produced. also while the wheels are not connected, you could stack pricks on top. so it's improbable, but not impossible.

just drink a cup of NO and you'll be fine.

Re: Maybe we shouldn't be reviewing all this code

#43

Post by singpolyma3 »

Arainach wrote: post #27
em-bee wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my performance goes up when i pair program. even if the partner is a junior, simply because i am more focused.

Intense focus increases performance right up until the point where burnout or exhaustion causes performance to absolutely collapse.

That's why breaks exist.

Re: Maybe we shouldn't be reviewing all this code

#44

Post by an0malous »

ramshanker wrote: post #13

At this point, I haven't even read around 30% of the code base in my open source project. I know our works by my manual testing. AI keeps writing tests for itself, even though I don't explicity ask for it, and I am not complaining.

Care to share a link?

Re: Maybe we shouldn't be reviewing all this code

#45

Post by levl289 »

Code review for CRUD apps is largely something you can hand off to a council of sub agents. Code review for a system whose business logic is not obvious within the codebase? Currently none of the prescribed steps in TFA solve for a peer looking at it with fresh eyes.

Re: Maybe we shouldn't be reviewing all this code

#46

Post by flerchin »

Arainach wrote: post #4

This approach doesn't scale. Pair programming once in a while can be incredibly valuable. I am glad to meet with anyone and talk over their code in person, brainstorm designs, run through a debugger together investigating it. But if you asked me to do that for most of an 8 hour day - much less most of the time in general - I would quit the job faster than you could fill out the paperwork. Constantly having someone lo…

To me pair programming is outdated. I did it for a year, and I understand that it can have some strengths, sometimes for some software. In the LLM age though, I haven't seen it, and don't think we ever will again. The stress, overstimulation, and exhaustion were real costs that the business just does not care about. "You are engineer, you not have feelings, bang keyboard harder with other Engineer."

Re: Maybe we shouldn't be reviewing all this code

#47

Post by wpasc »

wgreenberg wrote: post #8

i do find it deeply funny that a polemic against peer review has an AI generated header image with easily identifiable problems (notebook contents upside down, one child is about to cut her hand with scissors, the other is building a geometrically impossible "lego" structure). if only it had been reviewed by someone else before publishing!

I genuinely enjoyed the game of "where's waldo" that

> easily identifiable problems

sent me down. as soon as I parsed that line I stopped reading, and I tabbed back over to spot them

Re: Maybe we shouldn't be reviewing all this code

#48

Post by wpasc »

em-bee wrote: post #42
wgreenberg wrote: post #8

i do find it deeply funny that a polemic against peer review has an AI generated header image with easily identifiable problems (notebook contents upside down, one child is about to cut her hand with scissors, the other is building a geometrically impossible "lego" structure). if only it had been reviewed by someone else before publishing!

how is the lego structure impossible? it is unstable because it's made only of 1-stud bricks. and there are some non existent multi colored bricks in use, but those could theoretically be produced. also while the wheels are not connected, you could stack pricks on top. so it's improbable, but not impossible. just drink a cup of NO and you'll be fine.

Look at the base of the structure on the right side, and you'll see that in the same plane there are the bumps present and bumps hidden by the same flat plane in a way they shouldn't be. then the left side, the bump visibility doesn't make lego sense

(i agree that maybe OP pointing that out is nitpicking, but to steelman the case, such inaccuracies are what code review would find and are the subtle bugs that might pass a code review and break prod)

Re: Maybe we shouldn't be reviewing all this code

#49

Post by teaearlgraycold »

Arainach wrote: post #4

This approach doesn't scale. Pair programming once in a while can be incredibly valuable. I am glad to meet with anyone and talk over their code in person, brainstorm designs, run through a debugger together investigating it. But if you asked me to do that for most of an 8 hour day - much less most of the time in general - I would quit the job faster than you could fill out the paperwork. Constantly having someone lo…

> Constantly having someone looking over your shoulder is a world of stress and overstimulation that I (and I suspect many others) will not stand for.

I suspect this is a simple social anxiety you could train away.

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