Comment by kentonv

I agree that most code reviewers are pretty bad at spotting subtle bugs in code that looks good superficially.

I have a lot of experience reviewing code -- more than I ever really wanted. It has... turned me cynical and bitter, to the point that I never believe anything is right, no matter who wrote it or how nice it looks, because I've seen so many ways things can go wrong. So I tend to review every line, simulate it in my head, and catch things. I kind of hate it, because it takes so long for me to be comfortable approving anything, and my reviewees hate it too, so they tend to avoid sending things to me.

I think I agree that if I'd written the code by hand, it would be less likely to have bugs. Maybe. I'm not sure, because I've been known to author some pretty dumb bugs of my own. But yes, total Kenton brain cycles spent on each line would be higher, certainly.

On the other hand, though, I probably would not have been the one to write this library. I just have too much on my plate (including all those reviews). So it probably would have been passed off to a more junior engineer, and I would have reviewed their work. Would I have been more or less critical? Hard to say.

But one thing I definitely disagree with is the idea that humans would have produced bug-free code. I've seen way too many bugs in my time to take that seriously. Hate to say it but most of the bugs I saw Claude produce are mistakes I'd totally expect an average human engineer could make.

Aside, since I know some people are thinking it: At this time, I do not believe LLM use will "replace" any human engineers at Cloudflare. Our hiring of humans is not determined by how much stuff we have to do, because we basically have infinite stuff we want to do. The limiting factor is what we have budget for. If each human becomes more productive due to LLM use, and this leads to faster revenue growth, this likely allows us to hire more people, not fewer. (Disclaimer: As with all of my comments, this is my own opinion / observation, not an official company position.)