The Side Effect of Vibe Coding Nobody Talks About

I have gotten used to reviewing 1,000 plus lines of code. That sounds like a flex, but it mostly means my baseline for “normal” changed.

Lately I catch myself staring at a 100 line diff and feeling oddly impatient. Not because it is too much, but because my brain wants to move faster than it used to.

And it hit me:

AI coding has indirectly made my ability to read code faster.

Not slower. Not lazier. Faster.

When you spend weeks reviewing AI output, you build a different kind of pattern recognition. You stop reading line by line and start scanning for structure. Where does the data flow start. Where does it cross a boundary. What assumptions are baked in. You zoom out first, then zoom in on the few lines that actually carry risk.

That habit sticks.

Now when a teammate opens a PR, I am not hunting for syntax. I am hunting for intent. Does this change match the goal. Does it make the system clearer or noisier. Did it introduce new edges I should care about.

AI did not make me lazy. It made me a faster reader. The same way speed reading does not remove comprehension, it changes how you search for it.

The funny part is that the smaller diffs are still important. They are just not interesting in the same way anymore. They feel like tiny islands compared to the continent I am used to walking across.

I am not sure if that is good or bad yet. But it is real.

Seedling note. I am still figuring out what this does to code review culture and how to keep that speed without losing care.