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> it will become far less obvious that their comments should be downgraded. I'm curious why you think this would happen... I would imagine that their comments

by Jare 2y ago

> it will become far less obvious that their comments should be downgraded. I'm curious why you think this would happen... I would imagine that their comments will now have be to about things that matter, and if they are unhelpful they will stand out more.

Brian_K_White 2y ago
It is obvious that a style comment is of no significance, and that the person who made it chose to spend time and personal capital on something of no significance. It is not obvious that an actual code change is of poor quality. To show that takes infinitely more experience, work to analyse all the direct and indirect ramifications of both the original and proposed approaches, capacity to push back and decide that your own engineering judgement is equal or better than whoever is purporting to correct you, willingness to suffer everyone else accusing you of arrogance for that on top. Even with all of that, it's a lot harder to prove the valueless comment is valueless because the more you know, the more you know that practically every single line of code could be done 30 other ways with some valid argument for each one. It's completely insidious both for the junior and the senior. The junior has no way to know the junk comment is junk. So they internalize the comment and everyone is worse for it. The senior has it almost worse. They know enough to know they don't know everything and the comment might be valid, so they put in all kinds of work to try to figure out if they actually missed something, did they have point etc. Maybe in the end the code doesn't end up as bad as the junior just rolling over, but it sucked for everyone and the challenge was not really an intentional productive crucible, it was just a douche that everyone had to waste time and energy taking seriously. Only someone who actually is arrogant (whatever level, whichever side of the pr) has it easy. Again bad for everyone except them maybe.
- 1123581321 2y ago
  If the seniors are too passive to say no faster and faster, and management is absent, the junior’s going to end up being the tech lead. I’ve seen this. :) It’s not necessarily even bad if there is no meaningful leadership above or alongside the junior. The fast-rising junior may end up hiring developers who are more assertive and still capable.

by Jare 2y ago

Brian_K_White 2y ago

It is obvious that a style comment is of no significance, and that the person who made it chose to spend time and personal capital on something of no significance. It is not obvious that an actual code change is of poor quality. To show that takes infinitely more experience, work to analyse all the direct and indirect ramifications of both the original and proposed approaches, capacity to push back and decide that your own engineering judgement is equal or better than whoever is purporting to correct you, willingness to suffer everyone else accusing you of arrogance for that on top. Even with all of that, it's a lot harder to prove the valueless comment is valueless because the more you know, the more you know that practically every single line of code could be done 30 other ways with some valid argument for each one. It's completely insidious both for the junior and the senior. The junior has no way to know the junk comment is junk. So they internalize the comment and everyone is worse for it. The senior has it almost worse. They know enough to know they don't know everything and the comment might be valid, so they put in all kinds of work to try to figure out if they actually missed something, did they have point etc. Maybe in the end the code doesn't end up as bad as the junior just rolling over, but it sucked for everyone and the challenge was not really an intentional productive crucible, it was just a douche that everyone had to waste time and energy taking seriously. Only someone who actually is arrogant (whatever level, whichever side of the pr) has it easy. Again bad for everyone except them maybe.

1123581321 2y ago
If the seniors are too passive to say no faster and faster, and management is absent, the junior’s going to end up being the tech lead. I’ve seen this. :) It’s not necessarily even bad if there is no meaningful leadership above or alongside the junior. The fast-rising junior may end up hiring developers who are more assertive and still capable.