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Comment by theoryofx | Hacker News Reader

He knew the system well and seemed to do enough local testing to avoid major breakage but still. Why have a bunch of rules and policies that you do not follow yourself?

Because these rules and policies are for people that are judged to need them by the person with the authority and responsibility for making the decision.

Policies like these always have a cost and (hopefully) a benefit. Presumably this lead dev judged that the cost vs benefit didn't make sense for themselves but did for others. It's entirely possible they were correct.

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One of the main purposes of code review is to ensure that your code is understandable to other people. Good lead developers understand this. Bad ones find a way to push through their changes without review or get them rubber stamped, in my experience. Then you end up with big parts of the codebase that only the lead dev can work in productively.

the whole team has to review every single line of code to make sure everyone understands it? or is there a threshold like “we good if 7 out of 79 understand it?” almost 3 decades hacking and have never heard anyone saying that purpose of the code review (in the top 987 reasons teams may institute it) is to ensure your code is understandable by other people… wild :)

This page is literally the second result when you Google "benefits of code review":

https://www.browserstack.com/guide/code-review-benefits

> Code Review enhances the maintainability of the Code. It ensures that multiple people are aware about the code logic and functioning, which makes it easy to maintain in case the original author of the code is unavailable.

The fact that you've been "hacking" for three decades and never considered this isn't something to wear as a badge of honor. As for your absurd straw man about everyone on the team reviewing every line of code, I've never seen one organization that does that.

are aware about the code logic and functioning

awareness does not imply understanding :)

No, but it's a minimal threshold. In the end, following the same rules prevents you from doing dumb mistakes and prevents a feeling of unfairness such as OP felt. And, if you can't follow your own rules because they're too annoying, maybe you should change them. So, really, there are multiple benefits. Just follow the rules.

which rules specifically are you talking about?

The rules of the code review that the top level OP was talking about.

As long as authority and responsibility land on the same person, I see no problem with it.

If, however, a junior develop is responsible for making a change, but has no authority to make the change, then there is a problem.

Code reviews are often used as an excuse to disclaim responsibility when problems occur, and as a way to deny authority under the guise of mandatory review requests. They do also have many benefits for e.g. continuity of service, but those two drawbacks remain relevant today.

lord help all people that work in places where you need “authority” to make a change…

Rules are to be followed by everyone without exception, otherwise they should not be called rules.

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