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I have never not seen code reviews end up being a massive social/cultural pain point for most people involved. Most people hate getting their code reviewed in d

I have never not seen code reviews end up being a massive social/cultural pain point for most people involved. Most people hate getting their code reviewed in depth. In situations where there isn't just one lead dev who is responsible for reviews, this leads to "Merge Request symbiosis", where two people uncritically approve each others requests so they don't have to deal with the third.

mav3rick 7y ago
Code reviews by senior people are massively helpful for junior devs. It's one of the perks of being in a good big company that very few startups can replicate.
- afarrell 7y ago
  Agreed. I once left a job in large part because there wasn't anyone else to review my code.
  - reallydude 7y ago
    It seems incredibly self-defeating, to quit over a lack of CODE REVIEW at any point in someone's career. Hiring someone just to review your code is not a sane business decision, so you might want to think about how you overvalued that aspect. I would be very surprised if someone could make a business out of 3rd party code reviews, but stranger things have happened.
    - Thiez 7y ago
      How is that self defeating from the programmers perspective? Code reviews can contribute to growth as a developer, ultimately helping ones career. When a developer desires such reviews, and a company is either unwilling or unable to provide them, why should they stay? There are plenty of other companies around to work at.
    - afarrell 7y ago
      So suppose you met someone who graduated uni a year ago, was working as the sole developer at a non-profit, and wanted to learn to be better at recognising and writing well-structured code. Suppose they then asked you if they should stay at their job or go work for a company where they were working with other software engineers and you said they shouldn't. How would you advise them to develop their sense of good code style?
    - Traubenfuchs 7y ago
      > I would be very surprised if someone could make a business out of 3rd party code reviews, but stranger things have happened. Depending on how you define "make a business", this already happened. There are paid for code review and vulnerability scans. Sadly, I can't remember the companies that did them. I think one of them was by IBM... I saw them applied to new software (when it was nearly done) at two big, European companies. They were mostly worthless: The insights were barely above what Sonar gives you and many findings were "never gonna happen" edge cases.
meitham 7y ago
I agree, my role of thumb is to only review code if I was asked by the author to do so, and never offer to review someone's else code. Code is a bit like music, there is very little right or wrong, but a lot of flavours and opinions.
- mxz3000 7y ago
  Sure when you're the only one working on a project. Otherwise, the only right way of writing code is that agreed upon by the whole team. Any personal opinion, while affecting the 'opinion' of the team, does not matter.
- Traubenfuchs 7y ago
  Very little wrong? You haven't seen enough code! I have seen everything in merge requests: From liquibase scripts that would have wiped the production database to production secrets in yml files.

mav3rick 7y ago

Code reviews by senior people are massively helpful for junior devs. It's one of the perks of being in a good big company that very few startups can replicate.

afarrell 7y ago
Agreed. I once left a job in large part because there wasn't anyone else to review my code.
- reallydude 7y ago
  It seems incredibly self-defeating, to quit over a lack of CODE REVIEW at any point in someone's career. Hiring someone just to review your code is not a sane business decision, so you might want to think about how you overvalued that aspect. I would be very surprised if someone could make a business out of 3rd party code reviews, but stranger things have happened.
  - Thiez 7y ago
    How is that self defeating from the programmers perspective? Code reviews can contribute to growth as a developer, ultimately helping ones career. When a developer desires such reviews, and a company is either unwilling or unable to provide them, why should they stay? There are plenty of other companies around to work at.
  - afarrell 7y ago
    So suppose you met someone who graduated uni a year ago, was working as the sole developer at a non-profit, and wanted to learn to be better at recognising and writing well-structured code. Suppose they then asked you if they should stay at their job or go work for a company where they were working with other software engineers and you said they shouldn't. How would you advise them to develop their sense of good code style?
  - Traubenfuchs 7y ago
    > I would be very surprised if someone could make a business out of 3rd party code reviews, but stranger things have happened. Depending on how you define "make a business", this already happened. There are paid for code review and vulnerability scans. Sadly, I can't remember the companies that did them. I think one of them was by IBM... I saw them applied to new software (when it was nearly done) at two big, European companies. They were mostly worthless: The insights were barely above what Sonar gives you and many findings were "never gonna happen" edge cases.

meitham 7y ago

I agree, my role of thumb is to only review code if I was asked by the author to do so, and never offer to review someone's else code. Code is a bit like music, there is very little right or wrong, but a lot of flavours and opinions.

mxz3000 7y ago
Sure when you're the only one working on a project. Otherwise, the only right way of writing code is that agreed upon by the whole team. Any personal opinion, while affecting the 'opinion' of the team, does not matter.
Traubenfuchs 7y ago
Very little wrong? You haven't seen enough code! I have seen everything in merge requests: From liquibase scripts that would have wiped the production database to production secrets in yml files.