[Izkata]

> If it's true that the superficial signals of quality were once somehow good enough to keep the entire economy on the rails (it's not true)

It was true. The negative signals (we called them "code smells") weren't the be-all-end-all of reviews, they indicated to the reviewer where to spend more effort. It got us 90% of the benefit of an in-depth review with 10% of the effort. But with LLMs eliminating this, we now have to spend all our effort on everything, taking a lot more time and energy overall.

[dcre]

I think it’s true that we were able to establish trust and produce good work without verifying every detail — what I’m suggesting is that signals of that kind were not a very important factor. And code smells still work!