Code Reviews, AI, and Modern Engineering 🔍 — with Greg Foster
Jul 12, 2024
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CTO at Graphite, Greg Foster, shares insights on good code reviews, AI in development, and Graphite's engineering team structure. They discuss monorepos vs polyrepos, AI-human balance, and tech apprenticeships in the AI era. Common mistakes in code reviews, integrating AI, and Graphite's dev tool are also covered.
Smaller code changes lead to better code reviews, fewer bugs, and reduced rollback risks.
Graphite focuses on facilitating code reviews and fast code changes for improved team collaboration.
Breaking down large PRs into smaller changes enhances parallelization and development speed.
Deep dives
Greg Foster discusses the benefits of smaller code changes and code reviews
Greg Foster, CTO at Graphite, emphasizes the importance of co-changes being smaller, highlighting Google research showing the benefits of smaller co-changes in terms of reviews, bugs, and rollback likelihood. Graphite focuses on facilitating code reviews and faster code changes to enhance team collaboration and efficiency.
Graphite's core function and approach to code change collaboration
Graphite is described by Greg Foster as a code change collaboration platform built to enhance team collaboration in creating, reviewing, and merging code changes. Positioned as a layer atop GitHub, Graphite focuses on maintaining small and fast code changes while incorporating innovative practices from tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Uber.
The significance of different code review workflows in big tech companies
The podcast delves into code review workflows in big tech companies like Facebook and Uber that utilize stack changes, contrasting them with traditional GitHub PR workflows. The discussion highlights the advantages of breaking down large PRs into smaller, independent code changes to enhance parallelization and development velocity.
Understanding the shift to smaller code changes and faster development cycles
The evolution of software development towards smaller and faster code changes over the years is explored, emphasizing the importance of enhanced collaboration, continuous iteration, and reduced dependence on lengthy code reviews. The conversation underscores the benefits of embracing agile methodologies and frequent code reviews for efficiency and code quality.
Future implications of AI on code creation and code review processes
The podcast delves into the impact of AI on code creation and code review practices, contemplating the potential shift towards AI-generated code and the evolving role of developers in architecting and validating code. Insights are provided on the intersection of AI-driven code creation and human-centric code review practices for optimal software development outcomes.
Today's guest is Greg Foster!
Greg is CTO at Graphite, a tool that helps teams doing better code reviews, and smaller and faster code changes.
With Greg, we talked about what good code reviews look like, how AI is changing the development process, and how the Graphite engineering team works.
Here is what we talked about:
(02:01) Introduction
(03:06) What is Graphite?
(05:05) Graphite's code reviewing
(09:58) Combining different workflows
(13:07) Monorepos vs polyrepos
(17:28) Conducting code reviews
(21:57) The landscape of automated review
(25:09) The hidden meaning behind skipping code reviews
(27:43) Common mistakes
(29:53) Integrating AI in code review
(34:36) AI - human balance
(38:27) Tech apprenticeship in the AI era
(41:14) Graphite's structure
(45:15) A dev tool from devs
(47:23) Delivery process at Graphite
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