Thread

1. dimbletimbers · 1790559269 · focus · HN ↗

   A defense of human code review I wish I saw more often, especially in light of the concerns people have about cognitive/comprehension debt: comprehension redundancy. At the end, if taken seriously, at least two people understand how the feature works (even if that number is, on average, trending closer to between one and zero). Ideally at least one of the two also comes away with a better understanding of the wider system and how the feature fits into or stands out from that landscape.

   1. atomicnumber3 · 1790560581 · focus · HN ↗

      If only one person knows the code, then PR time isn't going to save you.

      I'm tech lead and I basically don't review PRs, and I tell people this, with a caveat - if you can tell me what you specifically want me to review, for what specific purpose, I'm happy to!

      So "can you review this bit for race conditions" is great, love it. This forces people to actually think about what in their code they should be suspicious of, if anything.

      "Can you review this" [link to PR] is getting a rubber stamp because humans have never been good enough at "just spotting bugs" to make this worth it and now any LLM is better than a human.

      And for the purpose of understanding - PR time is too late. I have not reviewed a PR ("for real") in a long time and yet I could tell you how every system my people have built works down to a very fine level of detail. And it's because _we talk to each other!_ We don't just chill in the same slack channel and code independently, we all value each others brains and want each others inputs because we know it will improve our product and we value what perspectives others will bring.

      Trying to learn via PR is a sad substitute for real collaboration and teamwork.

      1. skydhash · 1790564092 · focus · HN ↗

         I follow mailing lists (emacs and openbsd) and sending a diff is kinda the boundary between wishing for something and making the something into a thing. It’s the difference between discussing a plot and discussinf a draft.

         Sneding a PR should not be for understanding or just for rubber stamping. It’s about getting someone to look at your approach and helping you find flaws or proposing ideas that could make it better.

         When I review PR, the primary question is: For the stated problem, is the diff a good solution? Sometimes I don’t know enough about the problem, so I just try to see if the code has glaring mistakes (mispellings, styles,…) but those are just comments, not suggestions.

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