Comment by eyalitki
4 hours ago
Comparison was done in the scope of coderabbit AI code review tool, which sadly makes it practically irrelevant.
My personal experience as a software engineer, and a former security researcher who did manual code audit, is that this code review tool has such poor results that it isn't worth the "noise" and friction it causes developers during C/I code review
They do catch important things but it’s really contextual. You can’t grab a model slap it on top and say code review . Hence a dedicated review tool is almost dead . Code review should be part of your pipeline and consume test results from the original task , open spec etc . If you do not have that code review will not help if you do , what is the point of task rabbit just slap <your harness in the sandbox> review against <goal>
Yeah I personally don’t understand the point of AI code review tools all that much, as AI is already generating the code as well. All of these AI code review tools create so much noise, yet don’t catch the really important things.
What really important things are human reviews catching in your org?
I just feel more and more like the effort invested in manual reviews is not worth it
1. Whether the thing should be done in the first place
2. If it's the correct solution on a high level
3. Whether it conflicts with or duplicates other parts of the system
4. Whether the comments are actually useful or restating the LLM chat
Also many others but these are the most common IME
3 replies →
Code review tools are designed for less organised dev teams that don’t do PRs and mandatory human reviews already.
It is papering over a lower level of competency without having to invest in actual human oversight or real process improvement.
That's a thoroughly uncharitable view. Especially in smaller orgs with a minimum velocity dictated by the company's need to survive, the amount of code required to be written just to keep up with your competitors is massive. Trying to review that all by hand, thoroughly, is draining, thankless, and tedious. You end up with a few fast movers producing most of the code, and some slower movers forced into a reviewer role they never signed up for. It's an unhealthy dynamic.
It does add lot of noise after a point you start ignoring the suggestions and findings.
Code generated these days with fable and sol are near perfect. What issues they might have is logical errors.
> Code generated these days with fable and sol are near perfect.
If you're doing a simple CRUD app, sure.
If you're doing anything more involved they get the job done with dozens of shortcuts that bite you in the ass the moment you have on-call duty.
Way too much code and repetition and hacks.
Especially in GPU code, but also in other fields.