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by groby_b 1028 days ago
We, as an industry, didn't stop shipping bugs. (Small example: https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/releases)

And that thorough code review prevents bugs is, at best, a debatable assertion. See e.g. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/code-re...

It finds _some_ bugs. CI/CD, and a massive investment in automated testing has probably had the largest impact in moving software quality forward. (See e.g. "Accelerate", Forsgren, Humble & Kim)

Code review is an excellent tool to socialize knowledge and train up more junior engineers, but in terms of preventing bugs, it's low-value.

2 comments

The parent comment is sarcastic
Maybe. I can't read OPs mind, and it's a common enough trope throughout the industry that I figured adding some evidence could be useful.
Sorry I thought that was too obvious to warrant an /s but I suppose not.
I'm fairly certain we ship far more bugs now than we ever did.

Before we had the ability to just add a patch and let the user download it, the end result needed to be very solid, because once that disk was purchased and taken home, it was static.

Now less attention is paid to these things, because it's just assumed to be tomorrow's problem.