As software engineers gain seniority, we usually find ourselves shifting from writing code to reviewing it. With broader impact and scope comes the responsibility to review more pull requests across different projects and teams. The question becomes: how do we make the best use of our limited review time? Which PRs deserve our attention first?
I’ve been skeptical about AI tools for writing business code. After trying numerous products and tools, I found them to be mostly a waste of time when it comes to actual development work. The promises rarely match the reality, especially for complex, domain-specific code like the Datadog Java tracer where no other Open Source projects exist for the AI to get inspiration from.
But here’s where it gets interesting: AI is great at understanding concepts and somewhat good reasoning about priorities. So instead of trying to make AI write code, I decided to leverage its strengths for something it’s actually good at: helping me choose which pull requests need my attention most.