The Polite Code Reviewer

20 Mar 2017

TL;DR

Buddha says: try to not be an asshat

What is this post about, guyz!? OMG!

Lately some work colleagues told me that my code reviews are a little bit “different”. Being the very self-confident person that I am, I started to ask myself (and other people) what could I do to make them better. Then I discovered, much to my surprise, that the “difference” in this case was actually a good thing.

I’ll try to break down into steps the thought process that make me review code the way I do nowadays.

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Read the code (and not “just” the diff )

At least for me it is very tempting to just glance my eyes over the diff. And I normally try my best to avoid this urge and really® read the changes.

This is how I understand the context for the changes, and I think this is a pre-condition to make up any type of conclusions.

The objective here is to bring up the motivations

Maybe that piece of shit code that appears to be irremediably moronic is in there due to some strange historical reasons. And the first “code reading” that I do aims unfold the context within the code changes are wrapped.

So to really® read the PR before posting any comments is something that works very well for me (I guess).

Emphasize the goods before bashing the bads

As alien as that concept may appear I really (want to) believe that the main concern of the code reviewer is to emphasize the good stuffs. This way those delicate things can find the atmosphere to keep blooming.

WOOOW! Just blewed me away. Wink!

IMHO it’s way more effective to avoid bad coding from “happening” than to just complain when it happens. And no worries or false hopes:

bad code is going “to happen”

But my advice is: just relax and focus the review on appreciation of the good stuffs. Again, since this is a difficult thing for us programmers (should I dare to say humans?), here are some examples that Time taught me and that I tend to mix, match and use on my reviews:

And of course, I hereby grant the permission for you to use any kind of memes and animated gifs in this phase. Slow claps is one of my all time favorites.

Here some slow claps: you sure deserve it!

Reviews are historical registers

Githubz and similars offer a great deal of tooling to make the code review comments/messages look pretty and organized. And I find myself more and more referring to “old” Pull Requests. Majority of the times to remember the suggestions that arrived on solving some specific problem, or changing some specific type of code.

Write them as if someone, much probably you, would go back to it in the future. This also should be kept in mind while creating the Pull Requests, but this is subject to a whole new blog post™.

Now, it’s that time…

I try my best to point everything that is not ok with the Pull Request. But I believe this should be done in the most polite way that I can. And let’s face it already: I’m a sir.

An important thing to keep in mind (before start to point the things that should be different) is:

bad code is going “to happen”, remember?

And this is totally fine. We make mistakes all the bloody time. Well, at least I do. MAYBE I’M A MORON, WHO KNOWS!? But seriously, if we don’t make booboos we are not trying anything new/better, right?

To point those problems is to create opportunities to assess why this is happening:

Never say that something is plain ugly

First because it’s just wrong. Don’t be an asshat douche bad person. But also because this is very, VERY subjective.

The prettyness is in the viewers eyes.

So I try my best to be VERY objective about it.

If something is wrong, I try to show why and how

I use the miracle of code syntax highlighting and all sorts of h1, h2 and h3 on my markdowns to make my comments very readable. Well… at least I try, ok!? 😤

Another tip is to enhance the examples with references to older experiences, other people on the interwebz that the team respect (blog posts, books, etc).

Try and prove your point. Do some effort. Spent some time on it.

When I feel that something is wrong but I can’t provide a clear example on how to do it better, I try to call for a conversation. You know? That old thing when you exchange some words? Face to face? Probably some ideas will pop up, but I really avoid to write in the PR those foggy brain farts💨.

When you “THINK” something is wrong, just test it first

I’m always watching myself to punch me in the right ear before I write something like:

“I guess this isn’t really necessary, ya know? But I’m, like, not sure.”

The person that wrote the code spent some time on it, thought about some abstractions to make it cool, wrote tests/specs to guarantee that it’s working… So I think it’s just lame to “just guess” that something in the PR isn’t the best/right way to go. And more than that, kinda delegate all the job to prove or disprove something to the same person that is working hard on some feature.

And in the majority of the cases I discover really nice stuff when I do a rapid test in the terminal. You know? I’m talking about those “#third method is on Active Support or Ruby itself “ type of questions.

It was TOTALLY worth it. Even with all the punchs directly at the nose.

Now go there and just enjoy your day

We are all here for the fun and the learnings. So hang around with your peers allways you can, talk about what you can do better to improve your interactions.

Let’s have some fun on our working lifes.

xoxo

Thank you very much. REALLY! BIG THANKS

This post would be even worst without the carefull early reading, revision and polite point fingers from

You are the man, bruv! 💙

References:

While you are at it, I also wrote this:

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