Tell HN: Fewer PRs done with proper prompting, review, and refinement wins Unpopulate opinion:
Fewer PRs done with proper prompting, review, and refinement usually win long term. *3 thoughtful PRs a day > 40 poorly thought ones no matter how many AI agents reviewed them.* |
Competent engineers committing working increments of software straight to main and continuously integrated and deployed > PRs of any sort.
I did this on a small microservice for a project recently where risk was constrained and I didn't see much value or appetite for human reviews. AI review, if clear, merge straight to main.
I suppose the risk is you have a vibe coder with AI psychosis blasting stuff into main on a mature project? Do you have have any sense for level of seniority, team size and size of code base that would allow this?
I get the sense everyone would need to be very senior 10+ years experience, with a relatively small team (< 10), on a medium sized and relatively modern code base?
PRs don’t actually solve the “but what if someone ships crap” problem. Taking capacity from competent engineers to review and correct other employee’s code defeats the purpose of employing people: to add capacity.
Juniors/employees in training should be shadowing or paired with someone who is competent until they are competent, and assigned work at their level.