?? What

You claim you don’t read the code. People believe you. Later you reveal that actually you do read the code, as well as metrics about the code. You just don’t read line by line and scrutinize them individually. Then you want to say their opinions weren’t grounded, but all that happened is you misrepresented your own argument

In certain, extenuating circumstances, I will read the code. It is not in my common / critical path. It's not how I'd describe my workflow.

All I’m saying is that

by ‘I don’t read code,’ I mean: I don’t do line-by-line review as my primary verification method for most product code. I do read specs, tests, diffs selectively, and production signals - and I would advocate escalating to code-reading for specific classes of risk.

Is not at all what people consider “not reading the code” to be