Comment by kentonv

I find reviewing AI code less mentally tiring that reviewing human code.

This was a surprise to me! Until I tried it, I dreaded the idea.

I think it is because of the shorter feedback loop. I look at what the AI writes as it is writing it, and can ask for changes which it applies immediately. Reviewing human code typically has hours or days of round-trip time.

Also with the AI code I can just take over if it's not doing the right thing. Humans don't like it when I start pushing commits directly to their PR.

There's also the fact that the AI I'm prompting is, obviously, working on my priorities, whereas humans are often working on other priorities, but I can't just decline to review someone's code because it's not what I'm personally interested in at that moment.

When things go well, reviewing the AI's work is less draining than writing it myself, because it's basically doing the busy work while I'm still in control of high-level direction and architecture. I like that. But things don't always go well. Sometimes the AI goes in totally the wrong direction, and I have to prompt it too many times to do what I want, in which case it's not saving me time. But again, I can always just cancel the session and start doing it myself... humans don't like it when I tell them to drop a PR and let me do it.

Personally, I don't generally get excited about mentoring and collaborating. I wish I did, and I recognize it's an important part of my job which I have to do either way, but I just don't. I get excited primarily about ideas and architecture and not so much about people.