Code Review Anxiety Workbook | Hacker News Reader

Code Review Anxiety Workbook

developer-success-lab.gitbook.io

52 pointsmooreds13 comments

That workbook is all about anxiety in general, which is fine, but there's almost nothing specifically to do with anxiety as it relates to code review.

Here's my advice: Focus on whether the change actually solves the problem it's trying to solve. Run the code; does it work? What regressions could it cause? Is there any way it could be simpler?

Along the way, you may notice style guide offences, or minor nitpicks. It's good to take note of those things, but only raise those issues once you've addressed the fundamentals.

At the end of the day, confidence comes from understanding. So dig in and understand the context, understand the effects of the change, and give the best feedback you can to help get to the best solution.

Good code review method, but that doesn't address the anxiety aspect, which is real.

I always tried to treat and see it as a teaching and learning exercise and not make it accusatory or negative. As a reviewer, see it as an opportunity to teach others in good code practices. As a reviewee, see it as an opportunity to learn, not as a slam on you personally.

Doesn't solve it completely, but it helps.

Yeah, agreed that it is a good mindset to approach as a teaching and learning opportunity.

On the anxiety aspect, I think my point is that -- okay, exercises and workbooks can have their place, but the real way forward is to have a thorough understanding of the task at hand and provide your constructive criticism and help your team make their way.

If you need more context, ask questions. If you need to poke and prod to understand how the pieces fit together, then poke and prod. With all of that knowledge you can have a productive conversation about the proposed changes.

On the other hand, without all of that, then it is guaranteed to be anxiety inducing, since with your review, you are taking some amount of responsibility for a thing you may not sufficiently understand.

IMHO the syntax & other nitpickable matters should be caught by the linter. The regressions should be caught by the tests. And the fact the code runs and works should be a given. The discussion should be around the architecture of the solution & the long terms consequences of solving it that way. I also like to do the reviews in person, where we just go over the code together and talk about it. Small remarks can be immediately fixed

Also I think work in progress should be pushed often in a wip PR/MR, that way people can give early feedback

Completely agree.

It's a peer review, Not a control layer.

> It's a peer review, Not a control layer.

Peer review is absolutely a control layer. Having a review process in place means it requires coordination or at least negligence for a developer to introduce malicious changes into a project. At the very least, peer review can act as a quality gate for production changes.

Setting aside the addressing of anxiety and avoidance, a lot of good code review practice boils down to "could/should/must" and that it's good to call out these when you see them and label them appropriately, and when receiving a code review understand the difference between them.

Many developers are just bad reviewers, that’s one of the main causes of anxiety IMO. They rubber stamp, or nitpick on the most minute details because it was done in a slightly different way than they would do it. Or they use PRs as an opportunity to grandstand and bikeshed instead of seeing it as a way to work with their colleagues towards a common goal.

For those not feeling problematic levels of anxiety surrounding code reviews, I still found the sections of Step 4 to be very useful advice in general for how to give and receive code reviews well.

I find the parallels of code review and how work gets reviewed in Investment Banking to be incredibly interesting, except the latter is the wild west in comparison. Wall Street can learn a lot here.

I didn't know people get anxiety from code reviews these days. How far have we fallen as an industry?

There was no time ever where that wasn’t the case. People tend to get anxious when they are being judged, or when they have to criticize other people who they want to be on good terms with. There was only a time when code reviews weren’t common practice, if not completely unheard of.

Spoken as someone who clearly doesn't suffer from anxiety. All forms of work can induce anxiety in the anxious, it behooves those of us imbued with strong self confidence to be considerate of this when judging others' work.

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