Ask HN: Will human code review still exist a year from now?

Hi HN, edgy thought, seeing a lot traction and usage of code review bots lately across both startups and medium/larger companies. Whether it's CodeRabbit, Graphite Diamond, etc. (there are plenty more).

If models keep improving, and we eventually inject these code review bots with more and more context to validate even things like business logic, tribal knowledge, etc. do you think we could eventually arrive very soon in a place where we no longer do traditional code reviews?

Just work with your coding agent to develop things, get it reviewed by a code review bot, fix any issues caught, and ship.

racenis · 20 days ago

I have tried getting LLMs to review code that I have written and most of the feedback I get is useless. It's as if they can only spot the most trivial of issues, or even worse -- they find issues in places where they don't exist.

I guess that they are moderately useful for finding copy-paste errors.

Tony_Delco · 19 days ago

Review bots are the autopilot. Humans are the pilots. The autopilot will keep getting better, but you still want a human in the cockpit when something truly unexpected happens.

al2o3cr · 19 days ago

I'm 100% confident LLMs could replace any code review being done by people who think this is a good idea, since both parties understand the assignment to the same degree.

changisaac · 19 days ago

Haha nice one, took me a second there to understand this.

Disposal8433 · 20 days ago

If i don't review the code anymore, don't expect me to be responsible for it.

changisaac · 20 days ago

That’s true haha, even if obsolete for catching bugs, etc. one reason for human code reviews might just be accountability.

throwmeaway222 · 20 days ago

unlikely- as long as your code is fairly micro-serviced about, llm generated code is fairly superior in all ways.

palata · 20 days ago

> llm generated code is fairly superior in all ways.

Depends on how good your code is :-).

mindwok · 20 days ago

Personally, I don't even think you'll have a code review bot. You'll just do it in the IDE.

abstractspoon · 20 days ago

I'll still be reviewing my own code

aynyc · 19 days ago

A year? Yes, 10? Probably not.

Lionga · 19 days ago

We are in year 3 of engineers being obsolete with in 6 months... Pretty sure in 20 years we still have human code review