[ashtonbaker]

What makes you call your current review culture “sane”? I’m not sure I have seen that yet in my career.

[bobthepanda]

YMMV but i work at a place where

* code review is expected responsibility, so everyone participates in every part of it regularly, so they are also incentivized to keep the process sane

* we have an auto linter and we recommend saving on fix specifically so no one argues about useless style nits

* CR back and forth is measured in minutes or hours so you are not waiting days to resolve someone’s drive by comment

* CR feedback always has a specific action item that is easy to address

* reviewees submit smaller CRs which are quick and easy to review for reviewers

[jeltz]

> * CR feedback always has a specific action item that is easy to address

Then CRs are pretty much pointless. The feedback I want as a senior developer is the complex stuff and that is half of the time not easy to address. The trivial stuff I usually, but not always, spot myself when checking the code before sending it for a review.

[bobthepanda]

You ideally want that earlier and more high level than a code review.

If you are doing system/algorithm design in the code review, it’s not meant for that.

The action item can also be “can we create a issue to track and discuss this further”

[kiitos]

Reviewers are responsible for not just pointing out issues, but also providing (at a minimum) some form of direction, or (more ideally) one or more explicit suggestions as to how to resolve those issues.

This is an essential component of a productive code review culture.

[bobthepanda]

Yeah, a good review must explain why, and should ideally explain how it should be instead if it needs explaining.

* This code should be changed looks bad - not a good comment

* This code should be chabged because ten nested ternaries gets hard to read - better

* This code is hard to read because there are ten nested ternaries. Can we replace it with a helper method that returns one value using if blocks? - best, in terms of actionability

[wkimeria]

This right here! It makes for a sane, friendly culture, and junior team members also get to learn during the code review process.

[candiddevmike]

Prioritize code reviews over development work. Have SLAs. If you are assigned a CR, get to a good stopping place, pause your work, do the CR, and resume. Close CRs that have become stale due to submitter abandonment.

[kiitos]

+1, every PR should ideally be reviewed within a day, and certainly within a week.