Appreciation post: AI code review caught what 4 human eyes missed on Friday

Our team spent 2 hours reviewing a pull request for our checkout flow last week. We had 4 devs stare at it and approved it. Then I ran it through a free AI code review tool on a whim and it flagged a null pointer bug that would have crashed on every order over $500 in Seattle. That tool saved us from a massive outage. Has anyone else had AI catch something that slipped past multiple reviewers?

2 comments

2 Comments

harper_wright1mo ago

Are you sure it would have really crashed though? A null pointer in the checkout flow seems bad but most frameworks handle those pretty gracefully. Unit tests or even a basic QA pass would probably have caught it just as fast.

barbara841mo ago

OH MY GOD seriously?! I can't BELIEVE you think most frameworks handle null pointers gracefully in a checkout flow. That is just NOT true at all! I've seen this exact bug take down an entire payment system because the null wasn't in the UI layer, it was in the order validation logic deep inside the backend service. Most frameworks will give you a generic error screen at best or just silently fail and leave the customer hanging with no confirmation. That's a disaster for a checkout.