> criticism and nitpicking take no effort
Sort of unrelated aside. I recently started working with a new company and team, in a new ecosystem. I’ve found it difficult to ramp up and get productive. But the thing I’ve found most difficult is getting familiar enough to provide meaningful review.
It can take me hours of exploration to fully understand what might intersect with single line code changes. Often I’ve come back with a minor change request, even simply for clarity.
Where it relates is obviously these things are critique, but even picking nits has been hard. Not that I’m even predisposed to do so, but I’m trying to get familiar and provide value.
It turns out that effort has indeed provided value, I’ve caught mistakes just by being thorough and leaving as few stones unturned as possible.
And it’s reinforced to me that criticism and nitpicking take a lot more effort than might be obvious. Sometimes it’s quickly available based on experience, but even then that’s based on prior effort. I’m not saying it’s always welcome or appropriate. But it’s surprising to me to hear people seemingly reflexively say it’s easy.
A whole discipline (QA) is dedicated to it, and integrated disciplines (TDD, property testing) are still suspect for many.
Again, not saying it’s welcome or appropriate here to criticize or nitpick. I’m holding my tongue on several bits of feedback I wanted to say upon using the thing. But I think it’s a disservice to both the effort and value of critique to frame it as effortless and implicitly valueless.