[sangnoir]

That sounds like very basic code review - which I guess is useful in instances where one can't get a review from a human. If it has a low enough false-positive rate, it could be great as a background CI/CD bot that can chime in the PR/changeset comments to say "You may have a bug here"

[TheBlight]

One nice thing about a machine code reviewing is no tedious passive-aggressive interactions or subjective style feedback you feel compelled to take etc.

[crazysim]

This isn't always the case!

There was a code review Q/A model posted on /r/locallamas which was very amusingly StackOverflow sometimes.

[ceedan]

Discovering a bug, and reproducing via unit tests is very different than "a very basic code review"

[sangnoir]

Identifying potential bugs within a unit is only a part of a good code review; good code reviews also identify potential issues with broader system goals, readability, and idiomaticness, elegance and "taste" (e.g. pythonicity in Python) which require larger contexts than LLMs can currently muster.

So yes, the ability to identify a bug and providing a unit test to reproduce it is rather basic[1], compared to what a good code review can be.

1. An org I worked for had one such question for entry-level SWEs interviews in 3-parts: What's wrong with this code? Design test cases for it. Write the correct version (and check if the tests pass)

[hluska]

That is nothing like a ‘very basic code review.’ The LLM discovered a bug and reproduced it via a test.

[sangnoir]

What is the purpose of Code reviews, if not to identify potential issues?

[Cthulhu_]

Sharing knowledge, improving code quality, readability and comprehensability, reviewing test efficacy and coverage, validating business requirements and functionality, highlight missing features or edge cases, etc. AI can fulfill this role, but it does so in addition to other automated tools like linters and whatnot; it isn't as of yet a replacement for a human, only an addition.

The better your code is before submitting it for review, the smoother it'll go though. So if it's safe and allowed, by all means, have copilot have a look at your code first. But don't trust that it catches everything.

[hluska]

What was the purpose of ‘very basic’? The semantic value of that diminishes the concept of a code review. Why?

[sangnoir]

Calling it 'very basic' actually exalts the concept of code reviews, because the ideal code review is more than just identifying bugs in the code under review.

If I were to call the Mercedes A-Class a 'very basic Mercedes', it implies my belief in the existence of superior versions of the make.

[dividedbyzero]

Power play for devs who don't get to do that very much otherwise. Only 80% /s.