Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

AI writes more code than people can review. Now AI can review code. So why waste time by having people review code? There are benefits.

AI is writing code, i.e., software is writing software. AI can write code 24 hours a day without a break. Wow! And AI writes code fast. Double wow!! And AI can review the code AI writes. Triple wow!!!

Where are the people? What do the people do? Should people waste time reviewing code? No, but yes. No, people should not waste time. Yes, people should review code.

Many years ago, the late consultant and writer Jerry Weinberg told me about organizations where programmers reviewed the code of other programmers. After a while, errors dropped significantly in these organizations. It was not from the code reviews catching errors early. The improvement came from the learning. People reading the work of their colleagues learned from their colleagues. The learning improved the quality of work.

Reading led to Learning, Learning led to higher Quality.

Hmm. Maybe people don’t have the time to read everything AI writes. I believe people have some time for some reading and some learning and some improving. Let’s do better.