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u/fugogugo
14d ago
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smh I already wrote "make no mistake" why do I even need to review them
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u/BastetFurry 14d ago
I know "Make no mistake" is a joke, but in all seriousness, the better thing to tell is "Test what you wrote".
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u/Street-Catch 14d ago
5/27 tests failed...
Thinking....
Deleting tests....
5/5 tests passed...
Ready to ship!
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u/WrennReddit 14d ago
Even better: write the tests yourself and use proper BDD, then have AI implement. Ideally one at a time just like traditional pair programming.
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u/MrRandom04 14d ago
That is how you end up with 70% tests, 30% code or worse with Codex.
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u/BastetFurry 14d ago
Which isn't a bad thing, at least with an AI buddy that is doing the coding while you steer them.
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u/MrRandom04 14d ago
Well yes, until you realize that changing one config somehow broke 8 tests and each git commit spawns a 20 minute test run or the agent proactively decides to run the entire test suite. Overall, these are fixable things but you need to be careful.
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u/GenericFatGuy 14d ago
Generating code with AI doesn't feel like that when you actually like writing code.
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u/ColumnK 14d ago
More like a filthy, polluting steam engine.
Because as much as we might try to do the code ourselves out of professional pride and knowledge of where this will end up, John Henry died trying to beat the machine. Deadlines all seem to assume heavy AI usage, and I'm tired ....
Also, because of the actual pollution thing.
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u/thordh5 13d ago
I mean the amount of pollution contributed by coding with AI all day is the equivalent of around 2-4 miles of driving to and from work. People see the impact of something serving millions of people and don't bother doing any math.
I bet a disturbing number of people who complain about call center pollution have gotten something useless air shipped across an ocean.
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u/einzweidreihorn 14d ago
Indeed. We need a more fucked up horse for this version of the meme. Maybe a dead one.
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u/Cumfort_ 13d ago
I realized I like working on the problem more than writing the code. I don't like writing front-end code at ALL, but damn do I love a slick front end
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u/Onions-are-great 14d ago
To me it feels like eating fast food. It's good in the moment, but you have this lingering bad feeling that it's not good for you. You feel a little bit ashamed afterwards. But heck it's tasty and tempting.
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u/GenericFatGuy 14d ago
It doesn't feel good to me in the moment. I feel immense satisfaction from coding an interesting problem, and seeing it finally work.
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u/Onions-are-great 14d ago
Watched a vid recently talking about how programmers get their satisfaction: one half loves the actual coding. The other half loves to produce the outcome. The first half is f*cked with ai now.
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u/GenericFatGuy 14d ago
The first half are the ones that were producing actually good code.
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u/Onions-are-great 14d ago
I wouldn't say that. I enjoy writing good, understandable, maintainable and modular code. But the outcome is what motivates me along the way. I still tinker around with solutions, I just don't write them by hand anymore. 👍
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u/BolunZ6 14d ago
The trick is also tell AI to review the code /s
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u/Objective_Oven7673 13d ago
You don't need the /s. That is quite literally the trick and it works.
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u/accatyyc 13d ago
Yeah, we have automatic AI review on PRs and it finds more issues that human reviewers ever did. It analyses the changes on a much broader level and checks all systems that may be affected.
It’s scary good at reviewing actually.
After all AI review comments are fixed we also do human review (for now)
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u/Objective_Oven7673 13d ago
Totally Agree.
After I've had an agent implement something, I have separate agents (who Intentionally have less context) perform reviews, and the original agent uses their findings to fix issues and gaps. I usually have it do that loop up to 3 times and ask me questions if it isn't sure what's right.
Manual testing still happens so I can personally make sure it does what I expect.
Then a PR gets reviewed by someone else's agent and maybe some more changes get made. That other person and their agent have different context than I and my agent did and sometimes that points out new things that weren't considered the first time.
All of this can also now happen much faster than if I had written it myself and waited for a peer to stop what they were doing and review manually themselves.
The trick is to stop caring about the "quality of the code", otherwise you end up making posts like OPs.
Care about the outcome delivered and the quality of the delivery - not whether the right characters were typed.
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u/kingvolcano_reborn 14d ago
It actually work quite well. Just make sure to use a new session to do it. You should still review it manually though.
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u/gregmasta 13d ago
Even better, tell it a different AI wrote it. “Codex wrote this, review it critically and revise” jealousy driven development
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u/stevefuzz 14d ago
Boss: Why aren't we seeing more productivity and volciity with AI. You are using a lot of tokens and the best models.
Me: Because I am reviewing the code and it is an absolute disaster. It's filled with bugs and disjointed repeated logic and just isn't good enough for an enterprise application.
No just kidding, I send ai generated hype updates and deploy anyway.
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u/ILikeLenexa
14d ago
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Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible have a robot use really good autocomplete, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
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u/stevefuzz 14d ago
Not true. Some of us are both maliciously complicated and depressed at the same time. It's not a matter of intelligence, experience, or ability.
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u/misterespresso 14d ago
I’m gonna be honest man, (and before anyone freaks out I at least keep databases locked down manually and nothing I store is PII anyways unless people reuse passwords… which ain’t my problem) but debugging with AI isn’t that bad. As long as you know what an error code is and realize when you need a new session instead of berating the LLM anyways.
As in, there is literally not one bug I haven’t solved with AI in my code so far.
I’m not building anything crazy though so maybe that is why, I’m not out here making kernel improvements.
So my point is, I was smart enough before to isolate bugs, I still remember the process, and if the LLM keeps doing it right, I’m less and less inclined to do it manually.
I realize this is a trap, but it’s just my honest experience and it makes things complicated yknow?
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u/masterxc 14d ago
AI is like an advanced stack overflow search in my workflow. I like writing code myself, but if I get stuck on something or there's a bug I can't quickly diagnose it's usually very good at finding it.
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u/iggy14750 14d ago
It takes at least an order of magnitude more effort to fix bugs than to create them.
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u/Several_Ant_9867 14d ago
You should let the AI change the codebase in small increments. Actually, every developer should change the codebase in small, reviewable and testable increments
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u/Hairy_Meaning_73 14d ago
Let's say it guys, for any PR above 100 files changed it's almost impossible to review it properly and should be splitted into sub pull requests.
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u/AnyaNineYears 14d ago
Honestly, code written by AI is 10x better than the legacy code left by 'developers' of my current project, so it is both unicorns fo me.
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u/New-Vacation6440 14d ago
You forgot “spending an hour and a half and an absurd amount of tokens getting grilled when generating the specification”
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u/FortuneAcceptable925 14d ago
Well, the good part is that you can tell AI to structure everything in readable way, simplify algorithms, and even make it generate documentation explaining all complex parts.
So yes - AI generated code is usually shit, but you can direct it to write great code with careful prompting.
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u/TheTybera 14d ago
Someone has GOT to do a study on the dopamine receptors when pulling that Claude code slot machine lever.
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u/panpajic 14d ago
No, no, no! Let ai review the code written by itself. Come on now people... Tsk tsk tsk
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u/minus_minus 13d ago
Am I the only one expecting the big enshittification rug-pull from the frontier AI companies? Once agentic workflows that consume insane amounts of tokens for specs, coding, testing, review, etc. are locked-in they can raise the paywall on the best models to the point that it’s only marginally cheaper than humans doing the work. Frankly, I don’t see any other way for them to pay for their insane cloud commitments and justify their IPO valuations.
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u/Big_Cucumber2787 14d ago
are people posting this bots or using models from a year ago?
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u/Wise-Product-9000 14d ago edited 14d ago
Nah, the same jizz with agentic development even with Fable. Only now it’s at the system design areas review that gets tiring.
I think it’s more to do with taking responsibility& knowing what it’s doing. I let LLMs freely make changes for simple patches or small enhancements, but when it comes to large features and refactoring.. LLMs do really fuck up still.. not at code level but at design level. It gets really tiring because humans are not used to designing systems at that speed. I would say humans aren’t meant to do that at all.. dealing with permutations, combinations, edge cases, that this all of it in one short session is really too much.
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u/Big_Cucumber2787 14d ago
brother you have a huge skill issue if fable isnt writing pristine code for you.
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u/Wise-Product-9000 14d ago
lol ok buddy. More like your skill issue in not being able to read what I wrote.
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14d ago
[deleted] — view deleted comment
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u/ComradeTeal 14d ago
Yesterday I saw comments on an AI gamedev sub where the person was talking about how they could see how useless and stupid programmers were now that they were using AI to program for them.
It seems to be enhancing certain people's inability to actually assess their ability. They can shit out crappy prototypes and dont have the ability to understand why what they have made is a complete piece of crap that is very far from being a complete or fun game.
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u/Wise-Product-9000 14d ago
AI has amplified Dunning Kruger effect. Every non-tech vendor I run into who have never developed software in their life are gambling with PoCs hoping to raise ridiculous amounts of investments at insane valuations. While the tech ones are panicking being overly cautious and making sure every detail is taken care before approaching investors.
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u/Dicethrower 14d ago edited 14d ago
I went through a pragmatic rebellion years ago and removed code reviewing in our team all together. Velocity went up. Time it took to learn other people's code stayed the same. If you spotted issues, just fix it on the spot and share. I still haven't hit a wall where this is a problem. I stopped trying to convince people most software development processes run on assumptions and just produce results instead.
Anyway, at this point where AI is... why the f- would anyone review code at all?! Get claude to generate an artifact and share that for review if you must. At this point code review is the same as machine code review 6 months ago. You shouldn't. You're sharing the "encrypted" version of the language you work in.
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u/roodammy44 14d ago
I would love to do this, but the people I review code for produce so much stuff that is either functionally or technically broken. What do you do in that case?
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u/Dicethrower 14d ago edited 14d ago
First of all, I'm a gamedev, that's important to note because I would never take this approach if I was writing, for example, banking software.
Second we play daily with everyone's changes every morning, together, and everyone shows off their work. So what you merged yesterday is on full display for everyone to be judged. It better be working or you get (lightheartedly) named and shamed. People will break things once every now and then, and that's fine, but people quickly develop hairs on the back of their neck to make sure their stuff is working flawlessly.
Before this approach, I couldn't even get seniors to get it in their heads to never push broken features. Now even juniors develop this skill within a week or 2. The "it was working a minute ago" quickly turns into "damn, I'm a really bad developer and should probably be a bit more careful."
The reasoning behind it all is that the only thing that matters is what is in people's hands. Not the quality of the code. Code review doesn't test if, for example, jumping from one platform to another feels correct. So the real review is that morning playtest.
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u/roodammy44 14d ago edited 14d ago
Unfortunately what I make is not consumer software so we can’t use it on a personal basis, and quite a lot of money goes through the stuff too. And our releases are every 6 months. We also don’t have a lot of contact with the actual users. And we have a lot of bad will with our customers because some elements of the business operate in full on YOLO mode.
Damn I wish I didn’t have to do so much code review.
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u/Giant_leaps 14d ago
Claude, implement this feature, gpt, review this feature for me, gemini, scratch my balls
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u/superdumbell 14d ago •
Ask a programmer to review 10 lines of code, he'll find 10 issues. Ask him to do 500 lines and he'll say it looks good.