Let's assume for a second that the intelligence is there and these models really are great. Would it make sense to hire CTO of some big-tech company to do code reviews for your startup? Feels kind of like overkill to me. Code review is not about more intelligence. To me, it's about more cultural context. And all things equal, what difference would the model make, at anything above sonnet5 medium level?
GPT-5.6 Luna vs. GPT-6 Astra: Is a $1.20 Model Good Enough for Code Review?
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Re: GPT-5.6 Luna vs. GPT-6 Astra: Is a $1.20 Model Good Enough for Code Review?
#12Let's assume for a second that the intelligence is there and these models really are great. Would it make sense to hire CTO of some big-tech company to do code reviews for your startup? Feels kind of like overkill to me. Code review is not about more intelligence. To me, it's about more cultural context. And all things equal, what difference would the model make, at anything above sonnet5 medium level?
IME big models just feel like big models. There's no training or RLing a small model that will encapsulate the "world knowledge" and minutia that a big model will glance from the same training data. So it makes perfect sense to use them where "big picture" is more important - planning, code review, process review (i.e. was what was asked implemented correctly?), etc.
Re: GPT-5.6 Luna vs. GPT-6 Astra: Is a $1.20 Model Good Enough for Code Review?
#13I only use chinese models for code reviews because you can actually tell them to take an adversarial stance and actively look for security issues without risking refusals. GLM-5.3 has been great for this, although it can be slow on larger PRs.
Re: GPT-5.6 Luna vs. GPT-6 Astra: Is a $1.20 Model Good Enough for Code Review?
#14$0.10 extra per pr review is nothing. What software company is willing to accept worse reviews and less bugs found to save 10 cents?
That very much depends on how code will be written in the future, how much of it and how often it changes. If more of it will be ephemeral (kind of what agents are already doing for all sorts of tasks right now) finding ways to very cheaply check might be of high value.
(I suspect this won't be it, though. Probably something the model providers are going to bake into the models themselves.)
Re: GPT-5.6 Luna vs. GPT-6 Astra: Is a $1.20 Model Good Enough for Code Review?
#15$0.10 extra per pr review is nothing. What software company is willing to accept worse reviews and less bugs found to save 10 cents?
Exactly this. It's still (at this time) cheaper than a developer that would most likely perform worse.
Re: GPT-5.6 Luna vs. GPT-6 Astra: Is a $1.20 Model Good Enough for Code Review?
#16IMHO, Codex with Astra/Sol and Claude with Fable/Opus are all any professional programmer should be using in Sep 2026, if they can afford it. These models are still terrible compared to what we'd actually wish for, but they're the best available. If you can get away with using the $200/mo subscriptions, it's really not even a money thing for most professionals. Almost all of my work is now plan, generate, review, pla…
Qwen3.8 is all you need.
Re: GPT-5.6 Luna vs. GPT-6 Astra: Is a $1.20 Model Good Enough for Code Review?
#17Definetly. Code Review is no rocket science, but security is another topic.
Re: GPT-5.6 Luna vs. GPT-6 Astra: Is a $1.20 Model Good Enough for Code Review?
#18AI should be used for code review but not in CI.
You should already have 2+ developers looking at most PRs. And these developers should absolutely use AI. The PR author should use AI.
But what you should not do is pipe the AI output directly into the PR and tell the PR author to deal with it. That's adding noise to the PR review process. Everything it says is something the PR author needs to validate as relevant, helpful, etc. A human needs to do that before confronting the author with it.
You wouldn't ask an agent to review a PR then just copy/paste the output into the PR, would you?
Re: GPT-5.6 Luna vs. GPT-6 Astra: Is a $1.20 Model Good Enough for Code Review?
#19IMHO, Codex with Astra/Sol and Claude with Fable/Opus are all any professional programmer should be using in Sep 2026, if they can afford it. These models are still terrible compared to what we'd actually wish for, but they're the best available. If you can get away with using the $200/mo subscriptions, it's really not even a money thing for most professionals. Almost all of my work is now plan, generate, review, pla…
Astra is quite crap (enters reasoning loops like Gemini used to and fails to actually work on a task - would say yes this needs fixing, so I say go ahead and then it will spend half an hour coming back with yes this needs fixing and not doing any fix) and Fable/Opus unusable in many instances (they struggle to generate coherent English let alone code).
Out of these only Sol is quite useful - actually finishes a task, though you need to interrupt often as it likes to wander into its comfort zone.
Re: GPT-5.6 Luna vs. GPT-6 Astra: Is a $1.20 Model Good Enough for Code Review?
#20IMHO, Codex with Astra/Sol and Claude with Fable/Opus are all any professional programmer should be using in Sep 2026, if they can afford it. These models are still terrible compared to what we'd actually wish for, but they're the best available. If you can get away with using the $200/mo subscriptions, it's really not even a money thing for most professionals. Almost all of my work is now plan, generate, review, pla…
Use of closed models is unprofessional, and depending on your field negligent. The fact that it has been widely normalized does not make it less so.
You're handing over your (presumably your customer/employers) data to an unaccountable third party which has demonstrated itself willing to commit criminal acts, and to take other people's data without permission. Your ability to continue to perform this work can be withdrawn at any time for any (or no) reason. You have little ability to validate that the work is being performed as expected and isn't being silently nerfed or outright subverted based on competitive considerations, bribes, overactive 'safety', or cost management.
Outsourcing to a black box would be a reasonable expectation if you asked a non-professional to perform the work. A professional should be able to account for the tools they use.