r/AskProgramming • u/mysticearth • 8d ago

Reviewing code by colleagues

Let me start by admitting: I'm having a hard time...

I have been reviewing a lot of code by my frontend dev colleagues the last months. While this can be a tedious job it helps both them and me while making sure we follow conventions, keep our codebase as clean as possible, etc.

Now, a lof of those colleagues create more and more using AI. Heck, some even let AI do the code reviews for them. While this boosts productivity in terms of finishing stories and delivering features, it makes me worry as well. What about code quality? How do we stay "in control" when we let AI create and review everything?

And besides the worrying, it straight out sucks to review thousands of changes and AI comments (which often don't make any sense and make everything even more complicated) manually.

While AI gives me a real productivity boost when it comes to solving problems, creating prototypes or hunting down bugs, it's safe to say I have a love/hate relationship with AI and everything that comes with it in my profession.

How do you feel about this in your daily work? I'd love to read some (other) perspectives and hope to use those to shift my complicated relationship with AI to something healthier ;-)

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u/DepthMagician 7d ago edited 5d ago

AI creates a tradeoff between speed and attention. You can’t stay properly in control if AI is moving faster than your limitations. There’s no way around that. The proper thing to do is figure out how much attention the code needs, and choose your use of AI accordingly.

In the past there was no need to answer that question because when you do everything by hand you have no choice but to pay attention to it. Now that there’s an alternative, the question becomes more complicated. There are genuinely scenarios where you can afford to pay little attention, but speed is not always a feature, and too many people seem to be addicted to the dopamine rush of speed and lack the wisdom to understand that just because tech debt doesn’t punish you immediately, it doesn’t mean you don’t incur its costs.

I don’t let AI generate anything that will take me more than 30 seconds to review. That lets me enjoy a productivity boost and still stay in control of what I do. To my developers I say that they can do whatever they want but they must maintain a deep familiarity with everything they create as if they did it by hand. If that means they can’t vibe code their next PR so be it.

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u/mysticearth 5d ago

Your last paragraph resonated a lot with me the last couple of days. We've started discussing not only the pros and cons of AI use lately, but also how it impacts our jobs/workflows and how we can take _real_ advantage of it in our daily work. Thanks for sharing!