Hacker News Reader

Comment by spongebobstoes | Hacker News Reader

why does someone have to read it?

we don't read the assembly code produced by the compiler, nor do we read the code of all open source dependencies, yet we can successfully build software

View on HN

I don't understand why so many people bring up compilers. The reason we don't have to* read the code of compilers or oss libraries is because the developers who created them have reviewed it to ensure that it works. But if you don't review your own code, who will?

* As long as it works

code review isn't why programs are correct. careful testing is

Code review done properly plays a very big role in ensuring programs are correct. Everybody knows how hard it is to get complete test coverage. You need layers.

Code review __and__ testing.

many open source projects do not have code review

besides, there was a time before code review was the norm

we don't read the assembly code produced by the compiler, nor do we read the code of all open source dependencies

When you actually have to debug, you sometimes need to.

And when something the LLM wrote goes off the rails sometimes you have to look at code to debug too. But you don't need to make reviewing the code standard practice anymore than reviewing assembly code before shipping.

Yeah, that's because those things are either deterministic output, or produced by someone that was actually good at programming. LLMs are neither. If you don't read every line of code they produce, you are committing professional malpractice.

LLMs, natively, are better at programming than nearly every professional software engineer, full stop. There are a lot of meta tasks (not programming, software engineering) that they are worse at, but the actual programming part, they've transcended human potential.

You have to treat them like an ignorant junior engineer in nearly every respect, but trying to match with them at programming per se is a fool's errand.

The reason to read the code is not because you can catch their errors in programming. It's because they may have missed the forest for the trees at the operational or strategic level, and so that you can learn from them to understand better. It's like trying to beat the engine in chess now.

no you're not lol. You're managing a team of ever improving engineers. Opus 5.5 is almost paranoid about testing literally all its assumptions. It's already a better coder than me and I've been doing this for 30 years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com