Code Reviews Don't Scale

3 points | by surprisefox an hour ago

9 comments

  • dieselgate 43 minutes ago

    > The diff is still treated as the source of truth. I'd almost reverse that.

    I think this is interesting but it seems brittle. It makes me think of the Agile Manifesto "Working software over comprehensive documentation" - not that I evangelize for Agile.

      surprisefox 27 minutes ago

      Totally with you, it does feel fragile. Something hard to come to terms with for me is how much we actually care about the way something has been done itself

      if there are three equally good ways of solving a problem, it seems like reading every line stops feeling like a good use of time (and maybe even kills the speed gains of ai assistance)

        surprisefox 26 minutes ago

        Thanks for the discussion by the way :) It's refreshing to chat outside of my own mind and get a fresh take

  • g-b-r an hour ago

    > Read the summary first. Challenge the claims. Decide where the risk is likely to be. Then use the code to verify those claims instead of using the code to discover them in the first place.

    You get that with tiny commits, that make confirming the commits' text as easy as possible; if they're hierarchical it's even better, but that requires using a decent commits viewer (absolutely not github and the likes).

      surprisefox an hour ago

      I think it's a fair point, now code gen is much quicker, keeping commits slim is a challenge in itself. Agree the big repo platforms don't really do any favours in that department

  • g-b-r an hour ago

    but I guess this is written by an AI

      surprisefox an hour ago

      Not AI. Just a bored developer with an evening to spare.

      It's interesting though people seem to assume everything is ai-generated now

        dieselgate an hour ago

        Right on, I've been quite bored from 8-4 hours lately and have been commenting a lot around forums etc and can relate. Writing articles like this is more productive. I agree about the AI comments, it's basically written in the HN Guidelines "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances" or multiple others like "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

          surprisefox 41 minutes ago

          Very relatable. I've definitely found myself spending more time in discussions recently too. I kind of take the AI comment as a compliment to be honest. Its a shame the message can get dismissed so quickly because of it but I understand why people are suspicious now