In a Few Weeks, I Won't Know How My Own App Works
I’ve been doing a lot of code reviews recently, and I’ve noticed something about my experience during the reviews. And what it means for code in general, but specifically for AI generated code. But before I do that, I want to take you back to the ’00s. A simpler time. Back then I started doing something I only read about in books – pair programming. Ok, that’s a lie. Everyone who grabbed someone and brought them to look at your code because it’s doing something weird – you’ve done pair programming. But this was pair programming for like 80% of my work. And of course, not just me. This links directly to my topic – our understanding of the code. And in the age before AI, where teams really knew their code, that would be the biggest grade I’d give for code understanding. Meaning, if you and I work both at the same time on the same task, and finish it. I’d say we’re both at the highest level of understanding of that feature – what it needs to do, how it works, what it depends on, what depends on it, and how it’s written and tested. From here that level of understanding is going to drop. If you’re part of a team, but didn’t work on that feature, you probably know it exists. If we have dependencies, you probably know about them. But the rest is either non-existent or close to it. If you’re on another team, that level of understanding drops, and if you’re on another project – you may not even be aware. That makes sense, but we’re not talking about that today, I want to focus on my capability to do a proper review. And I go back to understanding for that. In order for me to give you proper feedback, catch your mistakes and offer alternatives, I need proper understanding. The more understanding I have, I can review better and make better changes. So far, so good. It makes sense. Two more things make sense. First the use of tools for review. Every tool, from syntax analyzer to the smartest security checker, work according to patterns, not understanding. All the tools check fo