Code review is overrated and is among the least valuable things humans contribute to software engineering.

Charity argues that humans are better suited to discussing problems and deciding what to build than manually checking code for correctness, syntax, and bugs. ✦ AI generated

Charity Majors · The Pragmatic Engineer · 2026-08-12 · original ↗

Her contrarian take: code review is overrated, and the least valuable part of what humans add to software engineering. Charity says that humans are good at conversations and deciding what to build, not reading code to check for correctness, syntax and bugs.

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