Here’s Why You’re Doing Code Review WRONG - Essential Software Engineer Skills

After years of working across multiple teams + companies, here are my best practices and tactics to have better code reviews. Code review is a fundamental part of every well run engineering team: any code written should get reviewed by a human who approves the change.
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
1:20 - Different company terminology for code changes
2:03 - Code review if you're new to a team/company
2:40 - Healthy code review -- too high level
3:14 - Healthy code review -- too low level
3:58 - Healthy code review -- sweet spot
4:51 - Best practice #1 - keep code changes small
5:37 - Best practice #2 - delegate work to the computer
6:37 - Best practice #3 - be proactive about getting feedback
7:27 - Best practice #4 - be aware of the back-and-forth
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[@RahulPandeyrkp]

For more tips about code review from the session that Alex and I gave to 700+ people, download our mobile apps: 🤖 Android: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.randomappsinc.techcareergrowth 📱 iOS: apps.apple.com/app/id1605094641 Also, my friend Curtis has a great course about mastering the code review here: curtiseinsmann.gumroad.com/l/code-review-course

[@chriszhang8365]

Totally agree with your points! Wish I had come across this video in my early career

[@parry1]

Great tips. The back and forth was pretty useful - especially the fact that the team and you are in this together - so some code would be approved, even if all changes are not in there!

[@MaulikDodiaHollywoodMovieLover]

That meme part in code review was fun. Great video. Keep up the good work Rahul.

[@jaggis4914]

Great points! Thanks Rahul!

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

thanks Jaggi :)

[@celina6204]

Awesome content Rahul! I love the tips about proactively leaving comments on your own diff and leaving funny memes. I'm about to start a new job so this is great timing. Thanks a ton :D

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

Glad it's helpful Celina :)

[@ElonMusk-ez5xz]

Thank you so much, Rahul. This video landed at the right time for me! :)

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

So glad to hear that!

[@manojBadam]

Very good summary of code reviews.

[@rdean150]

This is insightful and, personally for me, affirming in a number of ways. I agree with every point you made, as It is almost exactly how I think about reviews / PRs. Although I admit that I have, on rare but embarrassingly recent occasions, been guilty of committing some pretty chunky refactors in a single commit, but I was aware of and apologized for the painful review burden it represented. I was nervous when you brought up nitpicks in reviews though - until i saw what you consider a nitpick and what you consider a valid / important suggestion and realized we agree! Naming is super important, but sometimes I feel guilty about being a stickler about it. But it's so crucial for future supportability. This is particularly important when reviewing the PRs of our new grad hires, because it establishes the level of thoughtfulness that they should be striving for, and it gives them context that they very likely were not aware of.

[@rdean150]

Oh and in case you're collecting these - my current company uses an enterprise git-based sdlc, so we have PRs. But at my previous company, a major financial institution, we used an in-house version control system that utilized CVS under the hood. In that system, these were called "Bless Requests". A common abbreviation was "b+p", meaning "Bless + Push", which was equivalent to both approving and deploying to production.

[@abusayedrakib7019]

Excellent video ❤❤

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

Thank you!

[@sheetalkadam2099]

Just love these videos. The content is so original! Thanks! I really hope you channel grows exponentially. For some reason I just had a random thought your content would go very well with Ali Abdaal sort of video styling. Just a thought, I really appreciate the content either way!

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

Thanks so much Sheetal. I love the Ali Abdaal style, I've tried to emulate some of his sounds + transitions haha. I'm still learning a lot about better editing styles

[@sheetalkadam2099]

@@RahulPandeyrkp you will get there I am sure!

[@patanjalikumar2119]

As a new grad software engineer, this is super helpful! Thanks for making this video :) Sidenote 1: How do you think the GIF/meme sharing on code reviews is viewed from a professional standpoint at large companies? Sidenote 2: Looks like you've a dope desk setup! You should make a video on it :))

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

Thanks Patanjali! The degree to which you send GIFs/memes is probably going to depend on the company, but at every team I worked on, it was totally acceptable, for junior + senior engineers alike. It's also not required, so if there's any concern about it, sometimes a written "great job!" also works great. I don't think my desk setup is *that* special, but I appreciate it haha, might consider a video on it.

[@imbesrs]

Appreciate!

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

glad it helps!

[@ThanhDoan-zj4vu]

Thank you for your video. When I have a big PR for example few thousands lines of code then I should apply stacked PRs. What is the best strategy for merging in that situation? Cheers

[@gabrielfono844]

Sir I don’t know if you have seen my comment few days ago on one of your videos where you talked about how to focus on the specific section on the codebase when starting your first job instead of trying to understand everything and become really good at it. Yes I applied it 2 days ago and installing I was able perform better. I am getting better and better . I always watched all your videos but you have never made a videos about how self taught could succeed in the industry and what he should earlier on his career. I taught myself two years ago and been working as backend engineer for 4 months now . We focused on Java , spring framework and aws s3 Thanks

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

I think a lot of the advice b/w self taught and formal will be the same.

[@gabrielfono844]

@@RahulPandeyrkp thanks

[@PaulSebastianM]

What mic is that? Looks cool.

[@vulpixelful]

For #2, don't IDEs do this for you? I mainly stick to Jetbrains IDEs and their built-in automation scripts are pretty powerful. I'm not dealing with multimillion line codebases though, closer to hundreds of thousands. Love the videos!

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

One of the most frustrating parts of Meta was that all the code wouldn't fit locally in your IDE, so you can't trust in-built refactoring tools. For smaller code bases it can work but I'd still do compilation and unit tests.

[@yuichichi]

What if most of your junior developers are not experienced with the language, for example, Scala? There are too many ways to write the same thing in Scala. When you have new engineers who are new to it, how do you keep a balance between making sure I’m helping them to learn the language and not stressing them out about code reviews?

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

Few thoughts: - Do you have a clear wiki with the best practices of the language? Can some of these be enforced by a linter? - Are you able to create "starter tasks" for junior engineers that help them gain confidence while also improving the codebase?

[@Sanyu-Tumusiime]

Do you know why bro is sweating? He's carrying the weight of all of us industry freshers. thank you for the videos and knowledge

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

😂

[@aryanpandey8563]

Great video bro, i have questions: do use linux for programming?

[@muizzy]

You can use any OS for programming; but as a backend engineer, most of your code will run on linux. Very few companies (if any) use linux as their main OS. Most use windows or macOS with mac winning out in big tech.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

I've only ever used a Mac as a professional software engineer

[@vikaspandey7053]

5:38 can you refer some scenarios where automation is used in large code changes for android

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

mostly refactoring or deprecating a method or class. In a codebase as large as facebook, all the code modules cannot be loaded into memory of an IDE, so you need to use more advanced tools

[@pradeeshbm5558]

The main problem with code review is that their efforts are not considered and estimated. People do it for charity. This is why no one take any code review task seriously.

[@hamzaraza9804]

Your thoughts about going into web3 as a fresh grad, is that a good option, as there aren't many big web3 companies, and the big companies are only hiring experienced people and not taking fresh grads, so should fresh grads go into a small startup or a service-based company, or they should just go into Big Tech companies as Software engineers and then get experience there and then apply to big web3 companies?

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

watch this: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nqbOgplqg9ZmbdE

[@steveeuphrates-river7342]

I agree linters catch the logic bugs. Human code review is for things like swatting away class creation that doesn't make sense.

[@TheStruders]

Do you have any good content (online or yourself) about splitting PRs into smaller PRs? I often find my PR gets too big and I'm never quite sure what to do at that point

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

we have a few lessons about this in Taro. I also like this article from my friend Matt: www.semasoftware.com/blog/code-reviews-101-the-basics

[@ashokmanis2111]

Nice. Can you please help me is there any way to avoid repeated mistakes.

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

what's the mistake?

[@it_qasqyr5865]

How can I expedite the approval process for code changes?

[@BruceRicard]

Tip #1: submit small code changes

[@iOSAcademy]

Ah yes, Diffs. Why does this sound familiar 😜

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

Haha welcome to the new normal

[@shivnarayansreeanand7200]

bro pls make a video for masters in stanford

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

you got it

[@AmericazGotTalentYT]

A Skill Every Software Engineer Needs But Is Messed Up All The Time: Naming KZbin Videos

[@RahulPandeyrkp]

😭😭