On Code Review

photo via feathery 

This past week had been a tough one. I'll just say that it culminated in doing jumping jacks in the office bathroom in attempt to make my face look like I haven't been crying in time for standup. (It totally works, guys.) I was crying over a fucking code review.

I know. It sounds silly, but I assure you, it did not seem silly in the moment (and several hours after the moment, if I'm being honest). I talked to Vova about how to approach receiving and giving a code review. Apparently thinking about how I would have solved the problem, and then diff-ing it with how the author of the code solved it is not the way. And that's what I've done for every one of my code reviews. :( Clearly a change of perspective is in order.

Then, Forrest forwarded me this article. This is the story of a negative review mindset:

Author: I’ve done a lot of coding, and I’m proud of it. I really want to merge, but I need to ask someone to check my work.
Reviewer: I’m busy with my own code, but now I’ve got yet another task to do.
Author: This may take a long time…
Reviewer: Someone is touching my code, and I’d better make sure they don’t mess it up.
Author: hmm… I don’t think the reviewer even understands what I’m trying to do.

This is spot on. I had no idea I had a negative code review mindset. Something to think about this week.