In contemporary software "engineering" culture, this points at a much deeper issue than the scope of diffs that get presented in review tools.
Split diffs align well with modern "papier mache" development, where the goal of a task is to paste the smallest possible change onto whatever existing structure. Participants don't need to understand the whole structure and are expected not to alter it. Module refactoring is strongly discouraged and postponed until there's no other way to proceed on a critical feature. Designing (or refactoring) with an eye for future tasks is considered pointless because nobody understands which JIRA tickets are likely to survive and which will get purged or indefinitely backlogged.
When all you're supposed to be doing is overseeing Copilot as it drafts a new call to your upstream service and adds a perfunctory test that never fails, a split diff does a perfectly fine job of reviewing that work.
Whether this workflow represents durable, quality engineering or is just a way to LARP Katamari Damacy and get paid for it is another matter. As the enshittening continues year after year, it sure tends to look like the latter.
This essay is good food for thought, but it's just a peak into the dark forest that "move fast and break things" has been leading us into.
Split diffs align well with modern "papier mache" development, where the goal of a task is to paste the smallest possible change onto whatever existing structure. Participants don't need to understand the whole structure and are expected not to alter it. Module refactoring is strongly discouraged and postponed until there's no other way to proceed on a critical feature. Designing (or refactoring) with an eye for future tasks is considered pointless because nobody understands which JIRA tickets are likely to survive and which will get purged or indefinitely backlogged.
When all you're supposed to be doing is overseeing Copilot as it drafts a new call to your upstream service and adds a perfunctory test that never fails, a split diff does a perfectly fine job of reviewing that work.
Whether this workflow represents durable, quality engineering or is just a way to LARP Katamari Damacy and get paid for it is another matter. As the enshittening continues year after year, it sure tends to look like the latter.
This essay is good food for thought, but it's just a peak into the dark forest that "move fast and break things" has been leading us into.