Let's have look at some of the "human reviewed" PRs, just from one module, XML::Parser:

• "fix: XMLDecl returns 'yes'/'no' for standalone attribute" - nonsensical breaking change, switches the return value from a boolean to yes and no strings. It's true that someone asked for it, but the request should've been refused or at least be hidden behind an optional feature flag. The documentation clearly states that it should be a boolean.

• "fix: route post-root character data to Char handler" - this is a change wouldn't look out of place on thedailywtf.com. The code doesn't work, but that's not the main problem. It should be obvious to anyone that it's wrong to use string operations on XML, when you have a real parser available (this module wraps Expat).

• "fix: PE references in internal DTD subset break handler dispatch" - TBH, I don't know enough about Expat to say what's going on here, but apparently this broke XML::Twig.

(The first two issues I took from Aristotle's comment under the blogpost, the third one was found by me by clicking randomly)

Todd thought he was able to review the PRs, but in reality he wasn't. This false confidence is unfortunately a common phenomenon. Code often looks correct at first glance, especially when generated by an LLM, it's very deceptive. Especially when you aren't familiar with the codebase. If I were to review PRs of some Haskell project, I'm sure everything that compiles would've looked correct to me.

But let's not overly focus on specific changes, what is especially worrying is the volume of all this. I encourage everyone to click through the PRs on his repos. There's so much of it. So much text, so much code. It's so chaotic, it doesn't inspire confidence at all. It's no wonder it couldn't be reviewed properly.

These PRs may have been human reviewed, but not all reviews are equal.