you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 23 points 1 year ago

The first problem is they're letting AI touch their code.

The second problem is they're relying on a human to pick up changes in moved code while using git's built-in diff tools. There's a whole bunch of studies that show how git's diff algorithms are terrible, and how swapping to newer diff algos improves things considerably.

TL;DR on the studies:

  • Only supporting add/remove/move operations is really bad.
  • Adding syntax awareness to understand if differences in indentation should be brought to a reviewer's attention, improves code and makes code reviews more accurate. (But this is hard because it's language dependent)
  • Adding extra operations (indent/deindent/move/rename-symbol/comment/un-comment/etc...) makes code review easier, faster and more accurate. (But again, most of this requires syntax awareness.

There's also a bunch of alternative diff algos you can use, but the best ones are paid, and the free ones have fewer features. See:

  • source
  • parent