> a traditional async code review process This is not a very old "tradition." We started code reviews back in the 2000s with in-person small group code reviews

> a traditional async code review process This is not a very old "tradition." We started code reviews back in the 2000s with in-person small group code reviews, and only later moved to the tool-based async code reviews that are ubiquitous today. We adopted good ideas from a web article "Effective Code Reviews Without the Pain" ( https://www.developer.com/guides/effective-code-reviews-without-the-pain/ https://www.developer.com/guides/effective-code-reviews-with... ). We had folks enter comments in advance but went through them as a group, using social customs like starting questions with "did you consider..." to keep it cordial and non-confrontational. A lot of these reviews generated good discussions about code quality, clarity, etc. We didn't review 100% of code using this process, and we didn't always require the review to be completed before merging - the main goal was more to improve all developers' habits than to improve one particular chunk of code. Moving to the current tool-based async code reviews has pros and cons, but now it takes effort to ensure they stay positive, and the async process eliminated some of the great team discussions that the old-style reviews had. Perhaps the ideal solution is a mix of both approaches?