[On-Demand Talk] Teaching through Code Review

Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us, Derek!

Question: Do you remember the first code review you were a part of or even just one of the earliest ones you can remember? Given what you know now, how did that code review go?

Thank you Derek! I look forward to reviewing your resources. This is such a great topic. The point about reviews being fraught with landmines of gate keeping is well taken. I haven't been in as many formal code reviews. Most were just informal and found I learned new ways of doing things and a flexibility of how to see logic laid out when going the informal route. It does allow for breaking any company set style standards and is best for very small teams. I guess the best way to define an informal review is to look at the work with the developer afterwards, but not during like pair programming. What's your thoughts or experience with this idea of informal reviews? Thank you for your valuable insights!

I could have really used this talk a month ago :D
I've had to start doing code review on a big project I just joined and it's been intimidating. Luckily there's a lot of new people on the project and those who've been on it for a while suggested we do a quick call with whoever opened the pull request. That way there's not a lot of back and forth in the comments trying to ask for clarification and explain.

I'm wondering how would you approach a code review on parts of the codebase you're not familiar with yet? Or how would you suggest a junior dev approaches this?

As someone who is interested in gaining more proficiency in code reviews, are there ways that you can do a mock-code-review with a colleague or do a code review with yourself? What would that process look like to get more experience in this area?

This is one I was looking forward to. Good communication is a key to this. The points you mentioned of taking out the friction of the extremely nitpicky stuff like spaces/tabs and making the time for code reviews in the project scope are critical to make it as positive of an experience as it should be. So far, the connections I have that I share code with have all made it a great and uplifting experience when I have them review my code or help me find an error.

Question: How have you handled a colleague reviewing your code that was using more negative/condescending language?

This was great - I'm starting as a junior developer next week, so I never thought about giving code reviews, and I have some anxiety over the code review process. This talk was great for giving advice and an interesting perspective about code reviews in general.

Thanks Derek, that was very helpful! Until now I didn't have to deal with code review in a professional way but some day I'll need it and it's great to know how you handle it. Hopefully I find an environment where helping and learning from each other are appreciated. :)

This is more of a curious question, but have you read Refactoring by Martin Fowler, and if so, what is your opinion on it? I'm reading it in a jr dev book club with more senior members of my team and some of the general philosophy he talks about seems obvious when he says it, but is also things I never thought about as a brand new dev.

Thank you for this talk! I struggle with reaching out for feedback because I tend to take it too personally and view a judgement on my work as a judgement of my worth. Definitely not a helpful attitude lol. What would you recommend to someone who’s not necessarily working with a team, but wants feedback on their code? How do you think people who deal with social anxiety or imposter syndrome should approach the code review process?

Thanks for experience what you share with us, Derek!
This topic is important for me, too, as I'm currently rewriting few pages of my internal projects.
Q: How you can do code review for one and same project if it involves different technologies later?