Comment by addaon

4 days ago

> if you work on a team most code you see isn’t yours.. ai code review is really no different than reviewing a pr… except you can edit the output easier and maybe get the author to fix it immediately

And you can't ask "why" about a decision you don't understand (or at least, not with the expectation that the answer holds any particular causal relationship with the actual reason)... so it's like reviewing a PR with no trust possible, no opportunity to learn or to teach, and no possibility for insight that will lead to a better code base in the future. So, the exact opposite of reviewing a PR.

9 comments

addaon

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arrowleaf  4 days ago

Are you using the same tools as everyone else here? You absolutely can ask "why" and it does a better job of explaining with the appropriate context than most developers I know. If you realize it's using a design pattern that doesn't fit, add it to your rules file.

  • addaon  4 days ago

    You can ask it "why", and it gives a probable English string that could reasonably explain why, had a developer written that code, they made certain choices; but there's no causal link between that and the actual code generation process that was previously used, is there? As a corollary, if Model A generates code, Model A is no better able to explain it than Model B.

    • ramchip  4 days ago

      I think that's right, and not a problem in practice. It's like asking a human why: "because it avoids an allocation" is a more useful response than "because Bob told me I should", even if the latter is the actual cause.

      2 replies →

  • JackFr  4 days ago

    Although it cannot understand the rhetorical why as in a frustrated “Why on earth would you possibly do it that brain dead way?”

    Instead of the downcast, chastened look of a junior developer, it responds with a bulleted list of the reasons why it did it that way.

    • danielbln  4 days ago

      Oh, it can infer quite a bit. I've seen many times in reasoning traces "The user is frustrated, understandably, and I should explain what I have done" after an exasperated "why???"

supern0va  4 days ago

>And you can't ask "why" about a decision you don't understand (or at least, not with the expectation that the answer holds any particular causal relationship with the actual reason).

To be fair, humans are also very capable of post-hoc rationalization (particularly when they're in a hurry to churn out working code).