I am really happy when people are quite strict in code reviews, it makes me feel safer and I get to learn more.
Nothing worse than some silent approvals with no real feedback. What if I missed something obvious… and now it’s merged.
To be fair, I also enjoy getting my grammar corrected. I’m juggling 3 languages and things can get messy.
In that spirit, I will call attention to your first sentence, specifically the comma. In my opinion, that can be improved. One of three other constructions would be more appropriate:
- I am really happy when people are quite strict in code reviews. It makes me feel safer and I get to learn more.
- I am really happy when people are quite strict in code reviews, because it makes me feel safer and I get to learn more.
- I am really happy when people are quite strict in code reviews; it makes me feel safer and I get to learn more.
The first of my suggested changes is favoured by those who follow the school of thought that argues that written sentences should be kept short and uncomplicated to make processing easier for those less fluent. To me, it sounds choppy or that you’ve omitted someone asking “Why?” after the first sentence.
Personally, I prefer the middle one, because it is the full expression of a complete state of mind. You have a feeling and a reason for that feeling. There is a sense in which they are inseparable, so not splitting them up seems like a good idea. The “because” explicitly links the feeling and reason.
The semicolon construction was favoured by my grade school teachers in the 1960s, but, as with the first suggestion, it just feels choppy. I tend to overuse semicolons, so I try to go back and either replace them with periods or restructure the sentences to eliminate them. In this particular case, I think the semicolon is preferable to both comma and period, but still inferior to the “because” construction.
I’ve clearly spent too much time hashing stuff out in writers’ groups. :)
This is what I live for. :D
I agree with most of that. In formal settings, I prefer full sentences with conjunctions; however, choppy sentences are the ones that often end up in my Lemmy comments.
Strange, I get a mild hostility vibe from colleagues if I review too ambitiously.
Reviews have to be balanced to circumstance. There is a big difference between putting out the sales brochure and the notice on the bulletin board. Likewise in coding a cryptographic framework for general consumption and that little script to create personal slideshows based on how you’ve tagged your photos.
As a general rule, wider distributions, public distributions, and long-lived distributions need more ambitious reviews. If the distribution is wide, public, and permanent, then everything needs very detailed scrutiny.
I have found some success in starting with and occasionally revisiting review goals. This helps create and maintain some consistency in a process that is scaled to the task at hand.
Like the other guy, I also read your comment twice looking for mistakes but found none.
You should of left something to fix!
😏
Edit: I’m glad there so many people who are as passionate about the correct spelling of “should’ve” as I am. I was testing you all, and you passed!
Correcting the reviewer.
Notes: “should of” isn’t valid, should implies a verb, of isn’t a verb. I expect you meant “should have”. Please recall this in future submissions.
They should of course keep that in mind, but it’s not that “should” should always be followed by a verb directly. The problem is that “of” in this context is a mishearing/spelling of “have”, so they should in this case have written it like that instead.
should implies a verb, of isn’t a verb
“should” and “of” should probably be in quotes here?
Notably, a good code review should also bring up the good parts of the submission, and not just concentrate on the errors. Not only does it make the recipient feel better to get positive feedback among the negative, but it helps them learn about good practices too. Just concentrating on the errors doesn’t really tell them which things they’re doing well.
Many reviewers concentrate on just finding mistakes, and while it’s useful it’s sort of the bare minimum; a good code review should be educational. Especially if the submitter’s a more junior coder, in which case it’d also be a good idea to not just outright tell them how you’d fix some problem, but sort of lead them to a solution by asking them questions and pointing things out and letting them do the thinking themselves. But still, experienced coders will also benefit from well-structured feedback, it’s not like we’re “finished” and stopped learning.
Yes, I tend to do that, and thankfully some of my colleagues do too. Clever but readable solutions, following good and relevant practices, clear documentation, making a good MR description that makes it easier to review, and more.
That’s great to hear. It’s thankfully becoming more common in general, and we can all do our part in spreading these practices.
I tended to actively evangelize for it when I was managing coders or teams. Unfortunately it’s still not all that uncommon for coders to be downright offensive when giving feedback, like not necessrily quite Linus-level rants but things like “this is idiotic, this is stupid, that’s shit, why would you do that” etc etc. The usual explanation I’ve gotten is that they’re just being “honest” and saying what they think, and it’s not their problem if the reviewee (is that even a word‽ I can’t English today) gets offended. Some even get all huffy about it, like “oh we’re just supposed to coddle them and never say anything negative so their little feefees don’t get hurt?” And I mean, yeah, getting honest feedback definitely a good way to learn, but it’s not like the only way to point out errors or problems is to be a cunt about it.
Yeah, I learn so much from code reviews and they’ve saved me so much time from dumb mistakes I missed. I’ve also caught no shortage of bugs in other people’s code that saved us all a stressful headache. It’s just vastly easier to fix a bug before it merges than once it breaks a bunch of people.
I will correct both + your spelling because it drives me fucking nuts when I can’t find a function or variable due to it being severely misspelled
Me omw to tell the POSiX guys it’s supposed to be “O_CREATE” instead of “O_CREAT”:
Correcting my code is helpful. The machine didn’t know what I even meant. Computers are interesting and changing rapidly.
Correcting my grammar is an unsolicited English lesson from someone who already knew what I meant. English is not interesting or changing quickly.
What if your grammar is that bad that people struggle to understand you?
I know someone who is incomprehensible most of the time. I have to ask probing questions just to vaguely understand what they’re trying to communicate. I’ve politely told them more than once about the issue but they never try; they’re not mentally challenged or anything, just an ass.
Also that person may have known what you meant, but another might not and may have any number of reasons for not asking.
Better communication skills are a worthwhile goal and there’s no good reason to not learn and grow.
I mean, there’s a difference between something being phrased in an odd or confusing way, and a pedantic comment about whether you should use a Latin plural. 90% of the time you get the latter.
Yeah, but what percentage of normal speech is made up by words under 20 years old?
I read your comment twice, looking for any tiny mistake to fix. How thoughtless of you not to include any.
It’s actually “their’yre” dumby, learn ur words
It’s actually “their’yre” dumby, learn ur words
SOme morans should of staid inn School!!
