> We shouldn't give up on line-by-line review for serious applications.
But how many changes are actually serious?
I can have an agent mass-produce security bug fixes, zip through our low-priority backlog, etc.
IMO - we need to get out of our own way.
Building is cheap now. Agents are also really good at following checklists and running tests.
So instead of having individual engineers reviewing code, we need to
* Leave human review for the most impactful changes
* Get better at defining the quality bar
* Continually codify human concerns into rules or systems that can be checked against
A lot of this was touched on a few months ago with Spec-driven development becoming a hot topic when agentic coding started.
We should continue that with spec-driven review, testing, etc.
But how many changes are actually serious?
I can have an agent mass-produce security bug fixes, zip through our low-priority backlog, etc.
IMO - we need to get out of our own way.
Building is cheap now. Agents are also really good at following checklists and running tests.
So instead of having individual engineers reviewing code, we need to
* Leave human review for the most impactful changes
* Get better at defining the quality bar
* Continually codify human concerns into rules or systems that can be checked against
A lot of this was touched on a few months ago with Spec-driven development becoming a hot topic when agentic coding started.
We should continue that with spec-driven review, testing, etc.