Is code reading becoming the most underrated dev skill in the AI era?
With AI writing the majority of first drafts now, I've noticed something shifting in how engineering teams work, the bottleneck isn't writing code anymore, it's reviewing it.
A few things I've been thinking about:
Most devs I know got good at coding by writing a lot of it. But we never really trained to read it the same way.
Code review culture is getting worse, not better, as AI output volume increases. People are rubber-stamping PRs they don't fully understand.
The bugs that make it to production aren't from bad writers, they're from missed reads.
Curious if others are feeling this. Do you actively practice reading code, or is it just something you pick up passively? Has AI changed how carefully you review code before merging?
(For context: this came out of something I built, a small daily practice tool for code reading. Happy to share if anyone's curious, but genuinely interested in the discussion first.)
Replies
@manshahh I don't think the problem is AI-generated code, it's the false confidence it creates. When code looks clean, reviewers tend to assume it's correct. The future of code reviews probably isn't reading every line; it's learning where to be skeptical and what assumptions to challenge.