[progbits]

People review files top down?

I can't imagine doing that. I glance at the list, and try to spot the highest level change (schema changes, interfaces, etc) and start there. If the core idea is wrong no point wasting time on the rest.

Then I go up from there to implementation details and tests. Often jumping between modules or functions, coming back to some things later when I have more context.

[devnullbrain]

I think people putting enough thought and effort into reviewing, and developing it as a skill, are a small minority.

[FajitaNachos]

I would bet the vast majority of people do this. If they didn't, or preferred something else, it wouldn't be presented in the UI this way.

[ColonelPhantom]

I disagree, because there is no 'easy' way to know what the most 'significant' changes are. I can think of a few heuristics (e.g. most changed, earliest changed, as well as prioritizing things like header files for C and friends), but nothing that would work universally or particularly well.

[progbits]

Yeah I prefer the review UI to give me alphabetical order just so I can easily navigate it, but I won't read it in that order.

I think the google review tool (critique) would sort C/C++ header files before implementation, even though ".h" comes after ".cc". That's a nice convenience but it's still easy to navigate.