Code review for humans

Code reviews

• My job is to find problems?

Code Review Anti-patterns

• Nit-picking

  • Automate formatting changes and things like that
  • The author has put a lot of working into making the thing work, it’s frustrating to be getting comments about white space and line length etc

• Design changes when the code works

  • Code review is not the time to be doing design review

• Inconsistent feedback

• The ghost reviewer

  • Reviewer is nowhere to be found

• Ping pong reviews

• Why: Knowledge sharing

  • Purpose is not to reject the code
  • Focus is on how easy it is to understand the code

• When: At the end

  • Too late for design
  • Should have specific checks

• How?

  • Automate everything you can
  • When submitting for review
    • Changes should be small
    • Annotate your code
  • Should be clear who should review
  • Respond in a timely fashion: as soon as possible.
  • When writing comments bear in mind why, when and what
  • Be constructive and be nice. Find things in the code that you like.
  • Be specific

• Making changes

  • Respond in a timely fashion
  • Respond to comments

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References:

• Code Review Best Practices - YouTube