[Forricide]

I _kind of_ understand in the sense that - it can feel bad/like wasted time to do code review when you don't leave a single comment.

But of course, it's very very important to ignore that feeling and do the sensible thing, which is be happy that the code review is smooth and the code can be merged. I can't imagine the existential dread of realizing that half your job is pointing out the same common errors every single time. Tools like clang-tidy, clang-format, etc are so vital for staying sane.

[lrem]

I’ve reached the point where my reviews tend to be either instant LGTM, or “please formalise the idea behind this into a design doc and submit for review to the TL forum” (I.e. a polite “I think you don’t know what you’re doing”). The usual “how about ${BETTER_NAME}” can be left optional, there’s very rarely anything actually bad by the time people submit for review. Is this a rare culture?

[Forricide]

This definitely isn't my experience, but I work in C++, where having a second eye to look over things is... valuable.

That said, I think culture for this kind of thing varies wildly between different companies, and between teams in those companies; many (most?) teams are comprised of small numbers of people, so even one team/technical lead having a preference for a certain style could change things, and... well, everyone's different.