Everyone's raving about Semgrep being the lightweight, modern alternative to SonarQube. We made the switch six months ago to simplify our pipeline. I'm not convinced it was the right move.
The initial appeal was obvious:
* No need to manage a heavy Java service.
* YAML rules seemed easier to customize.
* Faster scan times in our CI.
But I'm looking at our actual outcomes, and the picture is muddy. Our developers are now flooded with *different* findings, not necessarily *better* ones. The Semgrep rule registry has gaps for our specific legacy framework patterns that SonarQube caught. I'm also seeing a lot more trivial style alerts that we have to tune out, which just trades one maintenance burden for another.
So when people say "better," what metric are they using? Lines scanned per second? That's a vendor's metric, not a security team's. I need to justify this toolchain to finance.
* What tangible reduction in critical vulnerabilities made it to production?
* Has anyone measured the operational cost difference, including the hours spent writing custom rules versus managing SonarQube quality profiles?
* For teams that switched back, what was the breaking point?
I see the developer sentiment shift, but sentiment doesn't fix vulnerabilities. Proof does.
show me the numbers