looks like the code review is happening too late. here the post’s author is also trying—hard—to reconstruct the mental states and models of the code author, esp

looks like the code review is happening too late. here the post’s author is also trying—hard—to reconstruct the mental states and models of the code author, especially in the large/significant update case. i argue that this workflow is a relic of the past, and should be replaced by a two-phase flow where in the beginning the essential ideas of the new changes are proposed, discussed, approved. then lines of code may be added or removed. the update is semantically grouped (perhaps via a commit) to correspond to key decisions made during phase one. that way the problem of encountering new ideas through the darker medium of code and struggling to comprehend is solved, since now the ideas are presented and evaluated in a human language. the subsequent code review confirms that the implementation adheres to the gaveled proposal, and this can be easily done, even by a junior developer.