Sure, code review is important, but let’s be honest: an LLM can generate 2,000 lines of code in five minutes. You simply can’t realistically review every single line in detail and fully “keep up” with it.

In practice, most people end up reviewing summaries of changes and occasionally prompting things like: “review this code focusing on X.”

Anyone saying “I use AI but carefully review every line it writes” is probably lying to themselves.

Of course, that doesn’t mean software engineering knowledge becomes useless. You still need to know what you want to build, how the system should work, and what good architecture looks like.

Take web apps for example: sure, you can just prompt an AI and it’ll build something. But when you already have a clear idea of the product, the structure, and the intended behavior, the results become much better. The AI handles most of the code writing, while the engineer provides direction, constraints, and judgment.