We hold code review dear as a tool to make sure more than one set of eyeballs has been over a change before it goes into production, and more than one person has the context behind the code to be able to fix it in future.
As model generated code becomes the norm I’m seeing code from junior engineers that they haven’t read and possible nor do they understand. For example, one Python script calling another using exec instead of importing it as a module, or writing code that is already available as a very common part of the standard library.
In such cases, are we asking people to mark their code as auto generated? Should we review their prompts instead of the code? Should we require the prompt to code step be deterministic? Should we see their entire prompt context and not just the prompt they used to build the finished patch?
I feel like a lot of the value of code review is to bring junior engineers up to higher levels. To that extent each review feels like an end of week school test, and I’m getting handed plagiarised AI slop to mark instead of something that maps properly to what the student does or does not know.
Pair programming is another great teaching tool. Soon, it might be the only one left.