I speak Russian and used to read habr.com a lot, which is a Russian-speaking platform where the community members can post on topics related to software engineering, computers, and tech in general. (As you can notice, habr.com have also been trying to gain an English-speaking readers for some time now.)

So I read or saw multiple articles in Russian from this specific author. Actually, the one linked in this post is a translation. To put it bluntly, while they clearly have a background in software engineering, they are a troll. All their articles seem to have one thing in common: they look to be as controversial as possible on purpose, I don't believe them to be sincere.

And I'll give it to the author, the tactic worked great: their articles usually generated a huge discussion in comments and -- I would guess -- a lot of traffic for the site. Though people seem to got immune to it over time.

And there's probably nothing wrong with writing in a provocative style, but you might want to keep it in mind when reading the post and not take it too literally.

> saw multiple articles in Russian from this specific author. Actually, the one linked in this post is a translation. To put it bluntly, while they clearly have a background in software engineering, they are a troll. All their articles seem to have one thing in common: they look to be as controversial as possible on purpose, I don't believe them to be sincere.

Is "don't be an asshole when it's actually not helping the other person like you told yourself if you look closely" actually controversial enough on that site to be considered a troll?

Honestly, the article comes across to me as someone publicly acknowledging their shortcomings in an attempt to combat them. If that's trolling Russian developers that frequent that site... maybe they deserve to be trolled in that way?

> Is "don't be an asshole when it's actually not helping the other person like you told yourself if you look closely" actually controversial enough on that site to be considered a troll?

In Russia, yes. Like the OP comment author, I'm familiar with both IT cultures, and there's a dramatic differences in the amount of politeness.

I have actually seen people get into a physical fight because of work-related dispute, more than once.

That's interesting; the article did seem like something more common in Russian and other East European cultures. Maybe it's a side effect of intellectualism being more highly valued (a good thing) but then leads to these superiority contests where "good enough" is derided if it is not done in some intellectually interesting way. Which can be a disadvantage in software engineering.

> I have actually seen people get into a physical fight because of work-related dispute, more than once.

Do tell, please

Probably some tabs vs spaces issue.

You shut your big fat pie hole. Spaces.

Why're you necro'ing just to be wrong?

The article is actually really useful; it’s a good example of how to not think of code reviews. If you relate to any of the text except for the last three lines, it means you’re reflecting on and running code reviews wrong.

A code review is an opportunity for the reviewer to learn about someone else’s coding style and improve it when necessary, and the reviewee to learn their flaws and just how other people see their code. Because everyone has their own viewpoint with their own flaws. Not an opportunity for the code reviewer to show that he’s smarter, or the reviewee to be “humiliated” that his code isn’t perfect.

This is the epitome of taking good from things even-though you know it is total garbage. ;)

I read your comment, and then the article, and honestly, the article makes a lot of good points.

I had precisely one boss who was an asshole code reviewer - and the worst is that by then I was a far better programmer than he was, because he was crazy.

(Random example of many - he personally adopted a "foveal coding style" which meant that he pressed return at the first possible moment after 40 characters. Yes, 40. To achieve that, he had a whole glossary of local variable names, all starting with the same prefix, that you needed to learn to read his code - slea, sleb, slec, sled, slee, slef, etc. "sle" stood for serialized ledger entry, except that none of these were serialized and most weren't ledger entries...)

Even knowing he was an idiot, these abusive code reviews were surprisingly hard on me, particularly since I got forced to do a lot of stupid things with my name on it.

I started to get panic attacks, and they lasted for years.

I made a girl cry once with a code review when I was being purely formal - "this cannot work", that sort of thing. Maybe she was somewhat oversensitive, _but_ she was definitely overwhelmed by her new job, and it was not productive! It was just a mistake on my part.

So I am "brutal" and incredibly detailed in code reviews _but_ I'm also friendly and chatty and explain how I have also made that error in the past, which I certainly have because I have made a huge number of errors!, and tips on how to avoid these issues in the future, as well as some sort of programming language suggestion if appropriate.

People seem to really like it. I get a lot of kind words. It makes it much more fun if you see this as a collaborative game whose idea is to get the highest group scope than a competition.

(Also, it's the rare code review that I don't catch some actual bug in the code that would lead to wrong results, and if you point it out nicely, people really appreciate not having to debug that later.)

I was under the impression that the author was going for an Underground Man vibe.

> If a guy brings me his code, and it has mistakes, it brings insane pleasure from how smart I feel [...] And if you tell me that you haven’t had this feeling ever, then you’re lying. Tell me about higher goals, training rookies and all that — I know you’re simply too full of themselves. And if you try to tell me that you learned to defeat that feeling (however it manifests in you), then I must be a pink unicorn.

I really can't relate at all. I feel the opposite. I often feel angry (I realize this is not a GOOD response either!) and always feel sad. I don't want to have to do more work. I don't want a reminder that my previous feedback didn't click with them.

I'm constantly looking for ways to do less tedious work, through automation and such, and code review for bad code is the worst sort of tedious work. I want to learn things, but code reviewing bad code doesn't teach me anything - I want to work with people who can teach me things when they review my code just as often as the reverse.

My takeaway from that has been to try to intercept people earlier in the planning and designing and start-of-coding process. If a bunch of bad code gets to code review, someone failed at explaining what this thing needed to do and how it should be done beforehand. The article claims this is always just itself a confrontational form of argument, but... it doesn't have to be. Stop being an asshole, and find non-assholes to work with.

I have worked with people like the author. They suck. They destroy entire teams and often times the feedback is 99% pedantic personal preferences because why would they do something useful like setup the linter and propose the silly things they always nit pick.

These people don’t last long and I have gotten pretty good at screening out this personality in interviews after having it cause huge issues at two different places I worked.

I am always careful to prioritize my comments during code review so I don't come off like that too often.

I'll say things like, "I would have done that like this because of this reason, but as long as it works"

or "This needs to change right now because it's a security hole"

or "We should find a more efficient way to do this, because as the data fills up, the users will start to notice it"

I am definitely harder on new people, and people who ask me for help when they should have been able to figure it out on their own.

I'm curious to know if you or anyone else reading this has run into the opposite problem. Or maybe I'm just "that guy" although I am reasonably certain that I am not.

As a rule, so far throughout my 5 year career as a full stack web developer, my coworkers have neither understood or cared about what clean code entails.

I don't berate, I don't criticize, I've taken to mentioning it once and then doing my utmost to never mention it again in an attempt to avoid labeling myself as the odd one out.

Granted, I've turned down a handful of much higher paying (and presumably higher quality teams) for various reasons. At first, it was because I was a bootcamper and high paying jobs are difficult to pick up out of the gate without the appropriate piece of paper. Since then, I've worked for various organizations on a consulting basis, and most recently landed at an early stage YC startup. Pay isn't great, but I have aspirations to start my own startup, so I'm cool with the pay cut for now in return for the opportunity to learn the ropes, business wise. Founder knows what he's doing at least.

But the devs, man. They just don't care. 500-1500 line React function components are the norm. No standardized way for retrieving data from the back-end. I dread assignments that require me to modify or otherwise integrate with previously written code, because the best way I can come up with to figure out what the fuck is going on is to rewrite it sanely. I'm being a little hyperbolic, I do my best to avoid rewriting wherever possible, but I'm not mis-characterizing things by much.

It's honestly depressing, especially considering I've had multiple other teams offer triple what I'm making right now, but neither of them were pre-seed startup SAAS companies which this one is, so here I stay for the time being.

Invariably, I garner a reputation as "that guy" on any team I work on, although granted this is only the second multi-dev team I've ever worked on. Still though, it feels terrible to get a bad reputation for writing good code. Founder likes my work ethic and output though, so I guess I've got that going for me.

Apologies if this turned into a bit of a rant, it just started pouring out, ha!

I know of a few startups with relatively 'senior' people who just don't care at all or are seemingly unaware about 'best practices', and will happily write tens of thousands of the most messy code, neglecting standardizing anything or refactoring their code to be more modular or easily understood.

It does seem to be something the big co. interview gauntlet is designed to weed out, whether it's worth it or not. I'm sure it's still relatively common, but probably a lot rarer than at the median startup.

> full stack web developer

I think this is par for the course in that subfield.

Part of it is the speed at which things change, both in the software ecosystems and in the change requests to sites. The reliance on comprehensive frameworks (which often need tons of workarounds and glue anyway) also reduces people's desire or experience in actually constructing good abstractions.

Compound this with the fact that startup environments generally don't care about anything other than shipping & pivoting, and want to defer all aspects of longevity.

The same problems exist all over the place, but I think are pretty prominent in these situations in particular.

Couple things about this, because there are levels. First, understand to be a successful engineer you need to be a bit pedantic, so start by forgiving yourself and take a deep breath.

Once you become competent enough to identify clean code, understand that your perception of clean code is colored by your own experience and current mental context. As you learn, you will undoubtedly be aghast at your own code that you wrote at any time before 6 months ago. After you've been at it for a couple decades you will come to the horrifying conclusion that your mental model is always incomplete, the human brain is weak, and it's hard enough to not get caught in the wrong local maxima without facing up to the immense challenge of choosing between global maxima in the incomprehensible problem space where software meets human needs in the hybrid meat/mental/cyberspace ecosystem where they exist and evolve over time.

The other implication is that no two engineers will ever see things the same way. It's not purely about technical strength—a weaker engineer might come up with a better solution given more time to think about it, or due to some other blind spot or skillset gap from the more senior engineer. Also, there are many issues of style and perspective where the important thing is consistency more so than some specific choice. In those cases there's a high risk of bike-shedding, and it leads to a fundamental truth of large scale software development which is that in practice you will never get everyone on the same page. Of course there are controls for this, but unless you have the budget and operational scope constraints of NASA (or perhaps medical device manufacturers) you can't actually enforce this without losing so much development velocity that your company is utterly uncompetitive in the market.

As you move up the seniority and scale ladder to larger projects and architectures, you will realize that you still only have 24 hours in a day, and it doesn't matter how smart or how right you are, the only tool in your built to increase your impact is a simple cliche: "pick your battles". There is absolutely no upside in nitpicking every line of code that could have a conceivable improvement. If you want respect from your colleagues, you need to get good at filtering what is important and what isn't, and only pointing out the most important issues, and doing it as early in the process as possible.

> forgiving yourself and take a deep breath

I appreciate the reminder and the helpful tone of your comment in general!

> As you learn, you will undoubtedly be aghast at your own code that you wrote at any time before 6 months ago.

Just checked, and my code from 6 months ago looks identical to what I write at work. My programming style went through a few different phases but its variability has mostly leveled off since I've started writing in a mostly-functional style.

> It's not purely about technical strength

It's simple stuff like putting together a base Modal display component for re-use instead of copy/pasting that div with the inline-styled zIndex of 99,999 for the umpteenth time.

> As you move up the seniority and scale ladder to larger projects and architectures

I hope to side-step a lot of those pitfalls by exiting the ladder altogether and starting my own company where I take a fine-toothed comb to the process of onboarding new hires. Time will tell if the demands of scaling a company end up sidelining my desire for good hires, but software is still a somewhat nascent field, so the sky's the limit if you ask me!

> the human brain is weak, and it's hard enough to not get caught in the wrong local maxima without facing up to the immense challenge of choosing between global maxima in the incomprehensible problem space where software meets human needs in the hybrid meat/mental/cyberspace ecosystem where they exist and evolve over time.

This is a good way of putting it and it's why it's the problem I've chosen to work on for my first product as a startup founder. I call it Pidgin, and my vision for it is a GUI tool for refactoring and even writing code in a more deterministic and reliable way. I spend my mornings before my day job working on it. I think the fact that I think about code quality intensely at all hours of the day probably contributed to the emotional tone of my initial comment. :)

> It's simple stuff like putting together a base Modal display component for re-use instead of copy/pasting that div with the inline-styled zIndex of 99,999 for the umpteenth time.

Is this on the critical path to solving more ambitious goals or just the Sisyphean task you've appointed yourself? It's fine to take pleasure in the small details, and if you want to set up a company to feed that obsession more power to you. However I will go out on a limb and predict two things: 1) unless you are independently wealthy, you are going to stop worrying about this level of detail pretty quickly once you are focused on how to make enough money to afford to hire talented engineers and 2) if you micro-manage style and details to this degree, you may find it hard to retain the level of talent you aspire to.

> small details

I took a look at your github profile and looked through your csv_builder repo project in particular. It's good, clean code. Well done! Given that you apparently understand what clean code looks like, I can't help but feel I may be misrepresenting the nature of the 'bad code' I provided an example for. Let me expand on my modal example and perhaps you'll better understand things.

Here's a snippet from the code I had in mind when I wrote my comment:

    <div
      style={{
        display: "flex",
        zIndex: 99999,
        position: "fixed",
        top: 0,
        right: 0,
        bottom: 0,
        left: 0,
      }}
    >

This was copy/pasted from some other modal in the application. Have you ever heard of the DRY principle? Don't Repeat Yourself. Now, I could wax poetic about just how far one ought to go to embody this principle when considering the time pressures and business demands in a startup environment, but I don't think it should be controversial to say that repeating those 11 lines throughout the codebase for every modal is a Bad Idea, especially considering they could have used the much simpler one-liner, <Modal>.

I won't go deeper into that because that seems like a pretty air tight assumption, but feel free to let me know if it's an invalid assumption on your part nonetheless.

Now, one might say, maybe he didn't know about the other component? And, in fact, I think this was probably the case. And so I can, to some extent, forgive him for copy and pasting due to ignorance of the other component. It's a big codebase and it's impossible to stay up to date on all changes all the time. Nevertheless, this isn't an isolated case, this kind of sloppiness is the rule in the codebase rather than the exception.

> 2) if you micro-manage style and details to this degree, you may find it hard to retain the level of talent you aspire to.

Good engineers make these kinds of mistakes occasionally, it isn't their default mode of programming. I wouldn't have to worry about micro-management because the need for it, at least of the variety concerning this particular example, would never arise. Surely you understand that bad programming can and does exist?

> 1) unless you are independently wealthy, you are going to stop worrying about this level of detail pretty quickly once you are focused on how to make enough money to afford to hire talented engineers

As long as I am responsible for the construction of any kind of software, I will never stop worrying about these kinds of errors because over time they are immensely costly. Team velocity slows drastically due to the unreadable, verbose and repetitive nature of this kind of code. That is unless, of course, the product I'm building manages to embody the vision I have in mind for it and appropriately and sufficiently addresses these kinds of issues such that they are impossible to make anymore. If and when that happens, I will stop worrying because I will rest easy that an automatic process catches these errors and I will be ready to dedicate my brain power to other more interesting problems.

I have no way of knowing exactly how much, but my suspicion is that, in aggregate, sloppy coding such as this likely costs many, many companies building software around the globe millions or even billions of dollars worth of development time every year. I want to alleviate that waste with Pidgin.

And, yeah, devtools aren't exactly the cash cows of software, but they do exist and are occasionally successful. I've got a whole list of SaaS companies in the space, but for brevity I'll simply drop a reference to one I found on HN just this evening. It's called Replay (https://www.replay.io/), and it's a standalone time traveling debugger for web code. They're backed by Andreesen Horowitz, so I think it's likely they have managed to strike on something true.

My aim is for Pidgin to target the process of construction rather than debugging or design as I've seen some other tools do, while still retaining the power of plain text that is invariably lost when using other so-called "low-code" tools.

If you think you might be interested, I would be happy to note your contact details down for when the alpha version is released!

It’s possible there are things you are still learning, or context you are missing.

You sound still early career enough that the years will likely mellow you out and teach you to better appreciate the ups and downs of building things fast.

You know what’s worse than no abstractions? The wrong abstractions.

Oh c'mon graybeard, you can't honestly be defending 1500 line components right now can you? It's not even a matter of abstraction choice, it's a matter of simple hygiene.

You know what's worse than the wrong abstractions? Copy and pasting your inline-styled div with a zIndex of 99,999 for the fifth modal in a row because you can't be assed to write a damned display component in anticipation of the next time you'll need to put a Modal together.

Not the OP but also a full stack at my five year career mark and your last point was an appreciated reminder.

I dread cleaning up solutions that I designed earlier where with hindsight, I made a lot of wrong assumptions. I still make wrong assumptions today, they are just designed less brittle.

You are right on the value of building things fast.

However one thing I have learnt is more coupled the code is with no or poor incomplete abstractions less likely anyone is going to change it.

In the interest of shipping fast I would rather have some abstraction today rather than none, simply because nobody fixes spaghetti code which is already working.

Building new things start slowing down more and mode and you end up taking weeks for what should have been an afternoon's effort .

There are no right answers, however sometimes wrong abstractions can be marginally better than none.

It’s certainly possible they don’t care, or they don’t know how to write good code.

Another possible reason could be that they know it’s temporary. A lot of startup code gets rewritten at least once in the first 5 years, there is some art to knowing what code might stick around and be worth the effort to do well, and what you should just bang out fast and move on.

It sounds like it’s possible you haven’t been able to have a conversation with your colleagues about their choices, which might be worth having candidly if you can find the opportunity to do so. If it is ignorance or negligence better to know and decide how you want to proceed if that makes sense.

Your team is fairly typical, for at least a large subsection of the industry.

> But the devs, man. They just don't care.

Well, maybe. Or they just don't know how to write better code.

Either way, the bigger problem is the team management that allows this.

> I do my best to avoid rewriting wherever possible

Why not? If the other devs truly don't care, you could take it upon yourself to clean up the code base little by little when you can.

> Why not? If the other devs truly don't care, you could take it upon yourself to clean up the code base little by little when you can.

I used to do this simply because it makes the code difficult to read for me to review if for nothing else.

Linters and style check tools only go so far, and bottom line is you have to ship software not write complex and expensive to maintain tooling, so automation beyond a point is not a solution.

The devs ended up relying on me as the their clean up guy for all the code all the time. I also becoming gatekeeper/bottleneck of sorts.

It is used make blame and dissection more difficult as more times than not I had cleaned up the code and the last one or two commits are mine.

Also the time spent in reviews reduce and you tend to miss important things as you have focused on what should be basic hygiene so much.

One of the reasons I contribute a lot less to production code is this. It is a losing battle if most devs don't care about it as much as you .

Even now the occasional pull request I would make would be peppered with such corrections , it is just automatic reflex for me, but it doesn't make that much difference.

Don't do this, people either have to value the cleanliness enough to do it as well, or you have to tolerate what is the common minimum or find another team/organization.

You'll always run into that problem if you care. Most of the time this results in having a clique against you who'll make your life hard, for example with increased bureaucracy.

If the manager is on your side, it's possible but not fun.

How do you typically screen for such personality characteristics? I'm curious since my current role involves interviewing a lot of engineers. I too have noticed similar traits in others in the past and I shamefully admit that I myself was pedantic about silly semantics and syntax in code reviews. Sometimes criticism of someone's code was warranted, and sometimes it wasn't and it was just me being picky (I like clean, readable code).

Being picky is not the problem. Being picky and detail oriented is good quality to have as a developer.

We aren't artists, engineering is exacting field, more details you notice and remember better you can be.

The character trait you should look for how do they present that feedback, is it constructive , is it positive , the kind of language they use and how patient they are able to be.

One interview technique/tool that works for me is asking them to review some sample code mine or a junior devs.

It is easy to gauge how many kinds of issues, how many are actually important and how well they present feedback.

The other technique that worked for me is when I review their code in a interview, people who are agressively bad almost take it poorly and can't take feedback positively .

Interviewing is not 100% representative of on job behaviour, however this helps a lot in filtering out

"These people don’t last long and I have gotten pretty good at screening out this personality in interviews after having it cause huge issues at two different places I worked."

Well, now everyone is curious for more details on this. Do share :)

I think I've had this author review my homework project for several job interviews.

Dude. 100%.

It is possible that the person is accidentally projecting their internal state as a model of how other people feel when they do code review. It's easy to accidentally fall into that trap. I've probably made that mistake before.

The truth is that people's emotions can be a lot more different from yours than people may be willing to imagine.

No one is perfect. But not everyone derives 'insane pleasure' from criticizing, either. And if you do, that may not be obvious.

I agree with the 'stop being an asshole' line, but to do that we need to help people realize when their qualia is way out of the ordinary. If you think everyone else is power-tripping, too, then will you think you're really being an asshole, or are you just doing what everyone else does?

It's scary to think that you might have something else you think everyone else does, but is really just you accidentally being oblivious. Speaking for myself, I'm going to try to be more mindful of this trap in the future.

>Stop being an asshole, and find non-assholes to work with.

I think the process of realizing he needs to do that and doing it is what he's describing in his article. Generally people don't open up about how their behavior is toxic unless they recognize it as a problem. And, though my experience with Russian culture is limited, I understand that competitiveness and criticism is the rule, at least in the STEM fields there. So this guy has been behaving the same way (most) everyone else does, but now he's realizing it's bad and trying to fix himself. I don't think he deserves the criticism he's getting in the comments here. We all start somewhere, and trying to improve should always be encouraged.

We are all products of our environment/the past. Things change when someone says "I don't like what I've become and I don't want to be this way anymore."

Those folks often get undue criticism, especially if they choose to speak up in hopes of fostering positive change in others.

Yeah, I was afraid I'd see myself in this post, because I'm known for giving tough reviews. But I don't. I feel terrible whenever I give a tough review. I agonize about how to say the difficult things that need to be said but do it in a way that won't sting as much, and I know that often, it's going to sting anyway. I feel like I failed for not helping the other developer know how to do things better in the first place. I'm still figuring out how to make my process more constructive, but I've got a long way to go.

One thing that I find that helps is, instead of saying that this thing is wrong, I just put in what would be right, and I do so with little commentary; usually `code block` -> `code block`.

Another thing that I think helps, at the CR stage, is asking after their thoughts for putting the thing together the way that they did. This DOES run into the potential problem of showing that they didn't put thought into it (or that part of it), but....

...there's a certain extent to which it's not your fault if they get to the CR and get a tough review. It's your organization's, "a month of work saves an hour of planning"-style. The developer who wrote the code getting the tough review wasn't set up to succeed, and IMHO that's more a comment on your org than any of the developers involved.

To bring it back around to your personal process, my (unsolicited, haha) advice is that if you're finding yourself giving a tough review, switch to a 1:1 review / pair programming session. Async text communication is hard and prone to miscommunication.

Same here. For me, code review is a good time to share knowledge and help other people. If a problem often comes up, I usually try to see if a tool can solve this. I'll admit that it can be really hard to know what level of tolerence people have for nitpicks and things like that, and at which point you're starting to sacrifice team spirit/people's feeling for small things.

That's why I love pipeline integrated scans that point out issues like excessive cognitive overhead (big fat if/else waterfall with loops everywhere) or "code smells" so the team doesn't get bogged down in munitia during code reviews. If someone needs help getting a piece of code tested to 100% or resolving a code smell they can reach out or bring it up in a standup.

Same, I've never felt anything like this. I find code review tedious and the only thing I really care about is if their code is properly tested or not.

I concur. I'm not a coder but I do review things every 2 months as part of the release cycle, and whenever I see mistakes, especially silly mistakes, I don't feel smart at all, it doesn't even cross my mind.

I feel, in order: disappointment - because how could they make this stupid mistake, then anger - why the f do I have to waste time to correct stupid mistakes, then a bit hateful - we need to fire this person and hire someone competent, then sometimes a bit scared - what else has this person got wrong and I missed, then a mix of all of the above.

What would make me feel good, as far as reviews go, would be to say "hey, this person did this way better than I would have".

Can you tell I hate doing reviews?

> I want to learn things, but code reviewing bad code doesn't teach me anything - I want to work with people who can teach me things when they review my code just as often as the reverse.

I mean maybe you're working on extremely repetitive code, but the idea that you don't learn anything from reviewing bad code, and hopefully writing comments designed to help not humiliate, seems pretty bad to me also...

You want to learn from others who review your code, but become angry when you have to teach those whose code you review? That seems bad...

It's certainly bad to get angry - I mentioned that there. I should clarify the anger happens when it's repeated more than on a one-off. E.g. if you have the same sloppy signs for 6 months (where I can tell by reading the code that you didn't even try to run your code locally), then I'm not learning anything and I'm getting frustrated because you're clearly not taking feedback to heart.

I try to avoid letting this show, but it's frustrating.

Sometimes I’ll look over PRs early on, notice the entire approach is bad, and leave a comment.

People often got annoyed, they would say their PR isn’t ready yet.

That’s fair, I kind of understand, my intention was to just save them time going down an incorrect path though, because I know it’s going to be difficult to convince them later they need to rework days of work.

Not sure what the solution is.

If team work isn't in the culture at your place it's very understandable they would react like that. If they don't see the benefits at your place and they've also only had bad experience with that at their previous places it's the natural defense mechanism.

You could do the first step for example. Put up your own stuff for early on RFC. Invite them to work collaboratively on it with you and give early feedback and see how you react. Basically: be the role model and let them follow.

Not guaranteed to work but it's one way to start some of it.

Sidenote: most teams don't actually do team work. It's a bunch of people thrown together that work on more or less loosely related stuff but everyone is out for themselves. It's a matter of the environment they have to work in in most cases. Individual metrics driven productivity culture. You can't expect someone to do good team work and collaboratively come up with the best approach when their incentives from management's side is to get as many PRs merged as they can to get that bonus and a good end year rating etc.

The other thing to keep in mind is that most code is fine.

When one company buys another the quality of the code is a calculation in the sales price. But it's a small one, and it takes a real dumpster fire to move that needle.

> I'm constantly looking for ways to do less tedious work, through automation and such, and code review for bad code is the worst sort of tedious work.

What kind of automation or tools are you using for code review?

My reaction to this was that this guy should not be making code reviews ever.

That emotional reaction in combination with conviction everyone has the same one disqualify him.

I wouldn't even want that guy on my team as a junior, because he's a headache waiting for a place to happen.

I'd expect a neatly-worded blogpost on the company Medium: "I Destroyed Our 55m User Database, But Here's What I Learned:"

The process is hated by those who do it good and loved by those who get to feel superior- by the physics of work, the process filters for asshats.

Nothing makes working at a place more unbearable than having to deal with someone that gives an excessive amount of criticism on working code, at least that's how I feel. I've been in that situation before and it made me never want to submit pull requests. It made me even madder when other developers, whose code was no better than mine but had been at the company longer, received basically no critiques.

Some might say, oh it's hazing, well fuck you because I'm quitting. I'm not putting up with any amount of hazing at a job. If I have to spend 8 hours everyday somewhere I'm for sure not going to spend it with some asshole.

Not only that, but the title of the post is, "I ruin developers’ lives with my code reviews and I'm sorry".

This person is so confident in himself, that he thinks his code review takedowns are so brutal, yet effective, that he is ruining lives. It almost comes off as "I'm so handsome that I ruin people's lives with my looks and I'm sorry."

And then there is this...

"I was mad that, while I spent my nights learning F#, my daughter started calling everyone around “fathers”. And this guy, instead of getting better at his job, went home to his children. And I wanted to punish him."

Uh, whose life is being ruined?

I had the opposite reading. It feels obvious he's creating a caricature, some of which is exaggerated, some of which is truthful of not just him, but other developers.

The recounting of "bullying"/hazing on forums definitely resonates as well, and he's just remarking that he'd become what he'd hated.

This is more of a reflective piece rather than a glorification of his behavior.

>> My personality today isn’t my disease. It’s a disease of the whole industry... just stop being that. It’s quite easy, actually.

I took "ruin developers' lives" to refer to helping get team members fired, but maybe I'm giving the author the benefit of the doubt.

Strange, I’m on a team rn with people who just approve everything.

I’m craving some constructive feedback.

I think part of the problem with the bullying described in the article and the "approve everything" approach starts with the framing of code reviews.

Instead of "please write this code, submit a pull request, and I'll tell you what you did wrong," I have recently been saying to new coders "take a shot at this problem, and when you've got something working let's get together and refine it, there is some context it will take time to learn so we'll probably need to make a lot of changes or even rewrite it before release."

That way they know what's coming (a lot of changes), they know why it isn't a sign they're inadequate, and it's more about working together than passing judgment.

It has also helped reduce the massive delays while junior developers agonize over making something perfect.

Hm, we've discussed doing more smaller concept reviews. Doing "first try" reviews sounds like a good alternative.

Ask for some time to walk through what you've done with someone.

I've been on the receiving end of enough toxic code reviews to develop an aversion to do them. So when asked to do them, I really just ask, did you test it?, do you want to demo it to me?, then approve it.

When people demo to me, I can see their pain points, because they always point them out. "Oh yeah, I was having trouble getting this to work, as you can see, it's still a little slow" and it gives them an opportunity to ask for advice or merely to vent.

So if you want good, honest feedback, a demo is the way to go. Honestly, it's hard to really grok what a bit of code is doing just by reading it. And who has time to pull code and run through it solo when doing a review?

The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. Too laissez-faire and you end up with a ball of mud.

Super critical code review culture can also end up with balls of mud. The two are not exclusive. Example is a team I was on that would critique the hell out of syntax and grammar in javadocs, formatting of annotations arguments, stuff like that, fine. But never look outside the source file for how any of it fit together. No design planning cause "code reviews". End result was tons of duplicated code everywhere.

I've submitted code that was reviewed like that, and it was super frustrating. Stuff like, "your javadoc uses invalid markup", when submitting code to a project that has almost zero javadoc to begin with.

I mean, sure it doesn't render well as HTML, but its readable with the code and the rest of the project has none so...

It might mean you're doing it basically correct, or it might mean you're touching parts that people don't care about much. The second is probably more common.

(It might also mean your team doesn't care about anything any more, in which case look for a better opportunity, unless you want to just cruise along for a while for whatever reason, in which case turn into a bare minimum performer like the rest of your team).

I'm a senior engineer in a known company and my target is always to leave no comments on a patch. I only give question-comments if I absolutely must know something before merging, or please-fix comments if something is definitely wrong and I can prove it. Also, if it's a part of the system that poses little risk (for example, if it breaks I can assign the bug back to the author and patiently wait for a fix with no serious damage) my tolerance for bugs greatly increases. The last part I'm not too proud of but frankly I don't have time to review everything. A "fix" for the last part would be to find a lower rank reviewer-buddy who has more time to share knowledge.

Thank you! I agree with so much in this, it really strikes the right balance of clean code vs productivity.

One of my peeves is a review that points out a bug/incorrectness without offering proof, or suggesting the fix/correct way. The reviewer might observe a code smell, but it's so much better dealt with a question-comment, e.g. "did you try?" vs "this looks wrong".

I generally aim to make every comment a question ("can we..."), and not make assumptions that the author didn't think of something already. Unless I just stating an objective fact that is clearly unknown e.g. "this duplicates library function x...".

Yeah the general style of putting comments into questions is much better.

But that's not exactly what I meant with question-comments, I sometimes genuinely don't know why are they doing something like this, or have to ask for additional testing/evaluation/analysis/profiling results before I can decide that it's most likely not going to blow anything up. And as long as there's low probability of damage (or rather low expected value of damage) I am happy with the change :)

What really helps is a style guide. It shuts most of those pointless style nitpicks, God I hate them.

For two decades I wrote professionally and there were no code reviews at all. I had no problem with that.

I did it for three decades (3.5?) and the only code reviews were with friends of mine who worked at multiple companies together. The whole point of the review was to find outright errors, not to optimize. Scarcely any ego involvement.

It worked out fine I think and, mind you, it used to be a lot harder to push out a fix. A lot harder.

Yeah, maybe I should add, we would hang out in the hall and whiteboard our ideas, workflows before we went back into our respective cubicles/offices and started coding.

The code review was preloaded.

I think the issue is when a code review is “do this”. Especially when it’s small things like formatting, and I have to wait a day for the PR to be approved (or they catch another formatting issue).

It’s better when code reviews are suggestions, the reviewer doesn’t nitpick (or at least fixes that stuff themselves), and small things like formatting are enforced by a linter.

Not to be rude - but... have you asked for it?

I don’t think this is rude.

I haven’t asked them. I should ask for more feedback.

I haven’t asked because:

I was a latecomer to the team and they had an established process

Cultural differences between myself and them

Honestly, I’m not sure all of them are experienced enough to give a useful critique

> Honestly, I’m not sure all of them are experienced enough to give a useful critique

I wouldn't let this be a stumbling block to asking for more review. I think it's like writing an article or paper - once you've invested a lot of time into the thing it gets harder to see the warts. Having another set of eyes can really help catch that stuff, even if they aren't at the same level of expertise as you. Back in my research days the department I was in had a person who's job was basically reading research papers and providing feedback - in this case she usually focused on the paper structure, clarity of phrasing, and of course grammar - she was an expert in writing not in CS. Yet looking back a drafts of papers before and after she had given input shows a massive improvement, even if the technical content was unchanged. Similarly a smart intern can be a great source of input for making my code clearer and better, even if the algorithm doesn't fundamentally change.

Also, if like me you are prone to falling into ego traps, inexperienced folks can bypass the ego's defenses. A simple "hey why did you do it $complicated_way instead of $simple_way?" can hit a lot harder than "hey make this $simple_way" from a mentor. I think it's because I've invested time into teaching the intern and when they ask a good question like that my ego gets a boost from "I taught that kid well" to balance out the "OMG YOU THINK I'M TERRIBLE AT THIS LETS FIGHT" response. (It may also be tempered because I tend to view the intern's questions as genuine requests for input, so I start thinking of the explanation and realize $simple_way will in fact work just fine.)

Code reviews can also have the opposite effect, I sometimes ask mentees of mine to review PRs of mine. Not necessarily to get their feedback, but to get their questions and to help transfer knowledge.

I used to do that when I started working on open-source as well, doing code-reviews to learn the code base (often I would not submit the review to not create noise)

I don't think it's something you should have to ask for. I mean if you went to a nightclub and the doorman let you in, would you say "Hey, aren't my shoes a little out of fashion?". To beat the analogy to death, I suppose if I was walking into a nightclub naked, on fire and carrying a bomb, I'd be a bit worried about the establishment of the doorman didn't refuse me.

So: is your code naked, on fire and carrying a bomb?

It's much easier to ask someone to be critical than it is to ask someone to go easy on you.

Maybe you just write incredible code the first time, every time? Can't discount the possibility!

IME, if the tests don't fail the first time you run the code, it says that the tests aren't actually hitting the new behavior. (Maaaaybe 1 in 100 times the code is actually right the first time.)

Likewise, if there's no comments on a pull request, it hasn't been read...

I'd have agreed once, but at some point in my life I realized most of my code really was working right the first time, even messy javascript. Anyone else have this experience?

Depends on the language. Strongly typed languages like Rust and F#, even Typescript to some degree, yes. Most of the time if it compiles it works.

I don’t think this is me, haha

Ask a security engineer.

I got annoyed by people leaving "philosophical" or "style" type comments in code reviews - i.e. nothing related to functionality or performance but just different ideas about how things could be written without obvious advantages. Then I realized I could just write something like "Thanks for the feedback. I've addressed the points that I feel are critical, the remaining comments can be addressed in future if necessary". Then I'd just ignore the worthless comments.

My mental model is that some people feel like they must comment on a code review to show that they've done something. They don't actually care, but just want to write a comment or two and you can shrug those off.

If following this approach you do need to be careful to only ignore genuinely useless comments though. Often a good way to tell is just to chat with the reviewer. That has the added benefit of the reviewer learning that useless comments will create more for them because you'll be by to chat about their useless comments.

While I think you're taking the right approach for getting the work done, maybe the comments aren't entirely worthless? In some cases, those are the best comments I've gotten when having someone review my code, even if I didn't make a change because of them. They're something for me to think about and either incorporate or not in some way in later work.

In other words, I think it's correct to not consider every comment to require a change unless it really needs it, but that doesn't mean a comment that doesn't require a change for the current work should necessarily be ignored because of that.

Conversely, nothing makes working at a place more unbearable for me than working with people that over-engineer everything. These are the types of PRs that tend to get the most feedback, and also the type of person that complains most when receiving this feedback.

* in my experience, of course.

Yeah this can be quite frustrating.

I've had the same thing the other way, where I feel that I usually give kind and fair code reviews (no nitpicking, etc) but have had former colleagues that get genuinely upset and push back really hard when I make any sort of comment on their PR.

IMO the absolute worst is excessive criticism while missing a serious business logic or functionality bug.

In my opinion the first priority of code review should be to prevent mistakes in the code at hand

> In my opinion the first priority of code review should be to prevent mistakes in the code at hand

I disagree. The first priority of code review is WHAT problem is it trying to solve and does it actually solve the problem.

If it's not even solving the problem correctly, pedantic nitpicks are inconsequential.

Oh yeah I agree, when I said mistakes in the code at hand I was considering a buisness logic bug/failure to 100% be in bound.

That is exactly why many harshly critique code. But I've never found their versions to be any less full of tech-debt. Usually it comes down to personal style. "Oh Brenda hates if/else, better convert it to ternary before I submit it. But Oh No! Bob is reviewing it instead! He hates ternary and always wants if/else! I'm doomed..."

Sounds like that team should define a style guide and stick to it. Either Brenda or Bob is going to be disappointed for a bit, but the code will be more consistent in the end.

This is why automatic code formatters such as Prettier -- are absolutely genius for teams. (It doesn't work for your particular example of ternary vs. if/else but the point still holds.)

If code reviews are centered around style the entire org is fucked.

> Because it creates technical debt

Does it ? Sometimes, the code reviewer has taken less time to analyze the problem and has not seen all problems a simpler solutions would bring.

This is why it's better to phrase the review points as questions, e.g.: "Why is this done in this way, ? Wouldn't x be more efficient ?"

Congrats to the author for realizing that confidence doesn't equate skill. This isn't being a pink unicorn, it's simply humility.

The real danger of confusing the two is that real skill dulls if you let overconfidence take over, since the very thought of being "better than others" prevents you from accepting that maybe there are things that you don't know or haven't considered.

For example, is "destroying" a coworker's commit in a code review really really helping? Did the person perhaps forget to consider that hiring to refill the position of a fired developer actually costs physical money (as opposed to time spent on coaching?) or that perhaps a lot of time is being spent on nitpicks without bottom-line value or that tip-toeing around egomaniacs can stunt autonomy and therefore creativity? This is not merely a matter of whether you're lulling yourself into some false sense of superiority/duty/whatever; thinking in terms of bigger and bigger pictures is an actual skill that one needs to develop when going up the career ladder.

Humility goes a long way in life. Anecdotally, it's definitely something a lot of software developers and systems engineers should learn how to practice.

There are many ways to solve any problem. If I reviewed every PR with the standard "is this exactly how I would have done it", I too would be destroying every PR I review. And I'm not even that good at coding - I'm the type of generalist who cares about things like the business beyond the code base.

What really matters is whether the code is solid and whether it will actually cause problems. Just because a PR isn't character-for-character how I'd write it doesn't mean it's bad. Based on the author's experience with the fired employee's replacement being just as bad, my guess is he was over defining goodness and raising the bar too high.

Bad PR to me means: bad runtime complexity, bad formatting, bad security, bad memory use, bad understandability. If it meets all those bars, which for a crud app is usually easy, then it should probably pass. I'll sometimes leave a "I would have done _x_ differently" comment on matters of taste _if I think it will help the other developer_.

> If I reviewed every PR with the standard "is this exactly how I would have done it",

This, too many people think their way is the only way. It only takes one cancelled project or one company going bankrupt (and 100,000s loc going "poof") to understand this work we do, really doesn't matter all that much in the end.

I've spent over 6 years working on 5+ legacy projects that had millions of lines of code and maintenance teams 30 times smaller than the army of contractors who developed them.

And I've learned all the small nit-pick maintainability issues made no difference. Whether or not there was a style guidelines, and whether or not it was enforced made little difference.

Things that really made a big difference were giant bone-headed architectural decisions like "just save persist this data as serialized text", "lets write all the business logic in stored procedures", "building the software on a terrible platform".

And having some type of identifiable domain model helped a little too.

bad PRs shouldn't be allowed, but you don't have to be a smug a-hole while reviewing PRs.

hell, that's a GREAT opportunity to get this "bad developer" under your umbrella and start mentoring him to be a better developer.

Yup! I have been very fortunate to work with extremely kind and empathetic senior engineers in the past. They have done wonderful jobs at using the code review process to teach instead of tear anyone down. I am always shocked at how many programmers become so aggressive about development. It might be silly, but I think the xkcd comic Ten Thousand is a great mantra: https://xkcd.com/1053/

Teaching people cool new ways to code should be fun, not an exercise in showing everyone the size of your ego.

Of course there are thresholds for competency. But if you find yourself having to destroy every PR from a developer you're probably toxic & insufferable.

When you're in these situations, you are faced with a challenge which isn't solved by code reviews no matter how illustrative, nice, or demeaning they are.

It's first solved by identifying what the cause is of their poor performance. Are they in over their head? Are they having personal problems which are distracting them? Are they experiencing burnout?

I've heard people say that they enjoy code reviews because it gives them latitude to be ruthless. After all, it's for the benefit of the business to not allow suboptimal code through, and it's just code. But frankly, I think that's a lame excuse and the easy way out.

There are people behind code, and while the code might suck, the people don't. Obviously, that doesn't mean you should let it through, but it does mean you should be at least professional, and preferably compassionate in how you review it.

A bad PR can mean soo many different things.

Ranging from "I wouldn't have implemented it that way" to "this opens up a huge security hole".

Security issues shouldn't be allowed in. But a lot of "maintainability" issues have negligible if any gains, and real costs like

it takes time to fix

could introduce new bugs

creates bad feelings between coworkers

> Why should be bad PRs ever be allowed for any reason?

Define bad PR. Are you sure that your definition of "bad" is accurate?

If you want some empathy with the guy whose code you are reviewing, go pull up some of your own code from a few months or a year ago. Do a mock code review on it.

Maybe everyone else only writes good code, but this works for me every time. Even after over 30 years coding, I still have no problem seeing how imperfect the code is that I wrote as recently as last year.

And don't ever make it personal, anyway. Adopt a neutral tone, phrase comments abstractly as how they relate to team goals, how the code might be made clearer, etc. Don't accuse, don't belittle, don't try to look smarter than you are. And try to recognize the difference between the stuff that actually matters, the things which will actually be a headache down the road, and the pointless details that are just not how you'd have chosen to code something.

There are a few types of comments on code review that I see:

1. Critical mistakes

2. Style guide mistakes

3. Non-optimal design (in your opinion)

#1 Always receives a comment, obviously.

#2 Always receives a comment, but we have good automation here so it's not too much of a worry.

#3 Is where it gets interesting. A lot of the time, commenting about this category is prematurely optimizing and it's a waste of time for both the reviewer and the owner of the change. At most I try to make one overarching comment about the design.

You really have to ask yourself "Does it work? Will it cause issues down the line?" If the answers are Yes and No respectively, you should likely let it go.

The feeling of ownership over the design, especially for a junior engineer, is incredibly important for moral and the ability to get better over time. IMO it's also important to let them make small mistakes now and again so they can learn from it.

With number 3 I usually leave a comment but it's something along the lines of "Why did you decide to do x instead of y. I think y would be better because..."

I don't necessarily want or expect them to change their code but I want to make sure they're considering multiple options and intentionally choosing that path instead of just copy and pasting something from stack overflow (as an example.)

Ouch. I’ve had a few cases of developers on the verge of being fired because of bad code causing friction with the team.

Code reviews never help in those cases. There is always an underlying cause: the developer is trying to rush to prove something, or maybe over-engineering for the same reason. Maybe he has some issues at home, or isn’t sleeping well. Maybe it’s just lack of experience. Maybe it is a personality issue and the developer is trying to save face by sticking to his guns.

Either way, I find that it is much better to have private discussions with the developer to increase the code quality via mentoring, or pairing. It helps removing the defensiveness, doesn’t make them feel publicly humiliated and doesn’t spend the time of the team with the review-fix cycle.

I'm not a super-coder; give me a JS project of moderate complexity and I'd have no idea what's going on or what I'm supposed to do with it. But as a data scientist I do have the reputation of being good at coding even among some of the engineers at my company.

And some of the code produced by both data scientists and engineers ... it's, hm, not great? Just between you and me? So I'm glad I've never had the inclination to tear anyone to shreds. Indeed, part of my job used to be to help people with their coding problems, and I loved doing that.

But sometimes when I'm reviewing code ... it's very hard to bite my lip and not call out every little issue, even though it would just be too much and most of the "problems" aren't actually very important. I try to impress upon people that developing good code is useful when I lead training sessions, but it's hard, especially for people who'd rather be doing data science than coding.

I have been on several teams that found the following article "Unlearning toxic behaviours in a code review culture" very helpful:

https://medium.com/@sandya.sankarram/unlearning-toxic-behavi...

I'd like to point out that every one of the "correct" examples is longer, sometimes much longer, that the "wrong" example preceding it.

I've found that I usually start with the "correct" way and end up regressing to the "wrong" way as more and more work piles up, stress builds and deadlines approach. I guess the "correct" way only works if the organization actually prioritizes it and gives reviewers the time to do it the "correct" way no matter what stage the project is in.

This should be basic training anywhere people learn how to code.

I had an incident many years ago where I found glaring design flaws in a much more senior developer's code, and, overcome with some feeling of superiority, left a million nitpicky comments and a snide summary, then posted on our team chat "left a review". Finally, I was getting back at all the senior developers who had torn apart my code. I later realized my comments were mean and I apologized. While you could still potentially call it constructive criticism, there is a difference between mean criticism and polite criticism.

I do think thorough feedback is important, that's how I've learned the most after all. But typically now if I I'm going to write more than 5 comments, I meet with the other developer in person instead. That way the code problems are solved faster and it avoids any sort of public humiliation.

Funny. I'd say that if somebody can't work with or maintain code written by others then that's the sign of a weak programmer. If all code you work with has to be written exactly as if you wrote it yourself then that's a weakness.

Maybe the tone doesn't translate but this guy sounds insanely egotistical. I feel truly bad for his family and anyone he works with.

It strongly reminded me of this graph of different cultural norms for phrasing criticism:

https://mobile.twitter.com/sebjilke/status/10364067943591731...

(I believe TFA is Russian, so read the Eastern European graph)

Very interesting to see those cultural differences.

Hilariously, the first graph is titled "Objective distribution" (of criticism phrasing). That's not how language works...

> I was, again, technically stronger. A thousand-string pull request was littered with 200 comments, not leaving the person even a faint hope in his competency. Great.

That's way too much feedback. It makes it very hard determine which problems are critical, and which come down to aesthetics or personal preference. On the flip side, if I was churning out buggy code at that rate, I'd want to know about those bugs in detail.

There's also an opportunity cost of evaluating code so tightly. Not only does it take up more of the reviewer's time, it also eats up developer time that could be spent on other features.

> The reason for these angry code reviews is obvious. As part of the team, I bear full responsibility for the project’s code base. I have to work with it later, after all. It’s a source of many issues for the business. The code doesn’t scale, can’t be tested properly, is littered with bugs. Support gets more and more expensive. It can’t be open-sourced or used to lure new developers.

Premature optimization? The mistake here is trying to optimize the legacy of your code base, possibly thinking too far ahead.

Everyone is capable of writing crap code ... Code that might give the impression of working but is unmaintainable.

PRs are conversations. Every team member should be able to request changes to start a conversation. A conversation about the code should focus on what tradeoffs are necessary to get stuff done now along with a consideration of how comfortable every team members feels they can maintain the code.

Teams where PR approvals are considered endorsements, where PRs are rubber stamped, where developers throw fits when others dare to ask questions etc are detrimental to both getting things done and maintaining a sane working environment.

Don't confuse the code with your worth. The greatest asset you will ever have is the ability to be openly critical about code you have written while understanding the right level of imperfection for a given circumstance. This only comes with experience. The more you nurture your ability to view your own code critically, the faster it comes.

Since we all have blind spots, take others' questions seriously.

I had an experience in my first year of grad school that has informed my code reviews and my general attitude toward reviewing others' work ever since.

I was taking a graduate-level introduction to mathematical logic. In the class we learned about a bunch of different propositional axiomatic proof systems, and then we proved properties like soundness and completeness for them. The class was organized around class participation: everyone was required to do at least one proof at the board in front of the class and every session consisted almost entirely of students doing proofs at the board.

I'd been out of school, working, for eight years before grad school and I found this all very intense and unfamiliar. I did my required work at the board, choosing an easy problem, but otherwise mostly sat in the back and watched. There was, however, a cohort of very intense aspiring logicians who sat in the front row and took deep interest in every proof.

One day, a student went up with a particularly challenging problem. From the start it was clear that he was taking an unorthodox approach to the proof. The front row went nuts, interjecting and kibitzing on practically every line, telling the guy different things that he should do instead of whatever it was that he was doing. The guy was a good sport and tried to justify everything and answer all the criticism, but it seemed like he might not get through the proof before the class ended.

The prof who had been watching quietly from the side of the class, let it go on for a while, then stepped out and quieted everyone.

"I need you to remember," he said to the front row, "that we are the audience. It is not our job to prove this theorem; it is this gentleman's job. Our job as the audience is to listen to him, and at the end, decide if we are convinced. He may do things differently that you would have done, but that doesn't matter, as long as in the end we are convinced."

That was twenty-three years ago, but it stuck with me. In programming, there are often many different ways that a problem could be solved, but there is almost never One True Way™, even though there are often many voices that would like to convince you that their way is the right one. My job as a reviewer of code, or really anything, is not to try to get the other person to do what I would have done, but to decide if I'm convinced that the way that they've chosen is good enough, and, if not, to ask for changes that would convince me.

Sure, sometimes a PR is so bad that it needs to be completely rewritten, but in my experience that's rare, and in that case the feedback should probably be given in person and in private or in a friendly, sympathetic group.

tldr; there's not one way to solve a problem.

i have been on an ever onward journey to try to find the balance:

- is a developer making the same set of mistakes? send them information on a better strategy to try overall

- how bad is this mistake? Is it just something that I know how to do better, or legitimately a broken way of thinking?

- what is worse, a slightly inefficient or unpretty algorithm, OR someone researching the problem / solution

Point is, 90% of my comments were meaningless. I really comment when things look wrong -- Did they misunderstand the intent of the ticket, did they verify everything with product because this looks weird, did they check the edge cases, did they forget about this other behavior, etc. All that I just mentioned is the real meat-and-potatoes. Code-fu is important, but less important than the other stuff. And if you are a calm, trusted, and mentoring team member, those same people will come to you to up their code-fu voluntarily.

Having an auto-formatter like Prettier or `go fmt` has been a huge boon and productivity gain for the teams that I've worked with. No longer having code nitpicks on formatting has saved so much time going through reviews, and it really increases the signal to noise ratio on pull request comments too.

Would definitely recommend those for any teams that have a similar teammate as the article author on their team.

Yeah, we mostly do Python and I've really been trying to push the use of black. I don't actually like some of black's formatting choices (OK, it's grown on me) but it's better to have a standard and stick to it.

This is why I now use tools like SonarQube (commercial static code analyzer) to drive most code quality reviews. SonarQube also gives justifications for all of it's recommendations, so it serves as a training tool as well.

The only I things I manually look for in reviews are overall readability, sensible naming, high level adherence to the architecture/design, and data system/database/API queries.

After 20 years of writing code and leading teams, I've found that most of the stuff developer blogs and the OOP community fret over simply doesn't matter in most cases. The high level interfaces are often more important than the low levels details, and static code analyzers do a decent job of pointing to problems. I've almost never seen bad code that didn't also have many issues in the static analyzer.

It also matters what kind of code you are writing - foundation code or something that will be used by thousands/millions of developers should have a higher bar than some internal one off. However, I've seen enough very profitable companies running on total crap code to believe that code quality is the most important thing.

I had a completely different response to this article then all of the other commenters. Yes, he is a smug, insufferable asshole who takes pleasure in putting his colleagues down. On the other hand, he is publicly acknowledging his poor behavior and apologizing for it. I thought this was a raw, vulnerable thing to write - he says that his poor behavior arises from a need to feel superior. We've all met people like that - but how many would publicly acknowledge and try to do better? A lot of posters are tearing into this guy for his confession. I suggest that we instead thank him for sharing and encourage him to do better in the future.

His post reminds me a bit of this religious group, Filhos da Mente de Cristo, that appears in Orson Scott Card's novel Speaker for the Dead. All members of this group take names that reflect their resolve to overcome their greatest flaw, for example: "I will put others before myself" or "I will listen carefully before speaking", etc.

In my opinion, when doing a code review over a weaker developer, as the stronger developer you should show your strength by making commits to help them improve their pull request, instead of passing back-and-forth a bunch of passive-aggressive comments. If you are reviewing someones work and you go back and forth more than a couple times, you should step in and pro-actively help resolve. Together as a team you draw the conclusion. NOT working as a team is a aspect of a Narcissist.

Definitely not; but, I would recommend, in the comment, to share alternative code and sample usage that they can take advantage of and apply themselves to their own code.

If you overwrite all their code, what have they learned?

> The universe blessed me with this trait so I can awaken the anger in other young and inexperienced coders

An important skill to develop is the ability to "read the audience". Almost prescient in nature, predicting how people will react to you is of utmost importance so that you can tailor your responses accordingly.

This is important when mentoring people because, even though tough love might work on some, it may very well destroy self esteem for others and make them shift career, ending something before it even starts.

If you are in a position of mentoring, it is your responsibility to adapt. It is painful, frustrating and a source of contempt when you try and try but you just can't seem to find the sweet spot to inspire newcomers, but as long as you persevere there is hope in teaching others.

I had a recent experience in this. I am in no way a long experienced infrastructure engineer, but I built my share of cloud applications to have an idea what can go wrong. I recently tried mentoring someone new and it was just plain frustrating. I couldn't explain too much without overwhelming him with details, and I couldn't just direct to sources without him feeling abandoned. That sweet spot of attention I couldn't reach before he requested to "learn different things" and effectively abandon infrastructure haunts me sometimes.

I had this once with a co-worker, who was also a technical lead. I don't mind critical code reviews, I do want them. I can spare my own feelings if I didn't do something right. But, if that person comes off as someone who cannot relate to anyone, the code review goes into a different direction.

Many times, I felt like I had to write code to get through the co-worker's code review, not for the requirement. The requirements to get pass that code review felt inconsistent and vague, so it made work very stressful. Having a conversation with him was a chore as well, as he came off to be very critical even when prepared with questions.

When he left the company, I was not the only one who felt a weight lifted off all of us. No one wanted to put up with that.

Code reviews and other analyses should be topics of open conversation, if anything. They should work both ways and help each other about not only needs but skill development. When it is used as a tool to boost someone's ego instead, it becomes counter-productive and many years later, I sometimes have that in the back of the head, even with those who I know can be attentive towards criticism in code reviews but are otherwise good people.

This except there is no right way and there are 'n' equally good ways of solving any real world problem. It's only worth pointing out flaws if something is genuinely bad and I mean bad. Otherwise you are using a gut opinion to trash someone else's emotional health.

Yay! you found an edge case that breaks a piece of code that will never get hit while the other million and 1 edge cases that haven't been found are still out there. Yet you drag it out from the dark and show it off for all to see like some damn trophy. Yay! look I am great I found one more thing wrong than the other guy. No matter that we are all swimming in a sea of wrong and every one is completely clueless. Only slightly less clueless than those who don't even realise they don't have a clue.

It follows from a simple argument - every programmer and every company has a different view of 'good'. I've seen it, I've worked in many. Just as every religion cannot be right, every weird view on correct programming style cannot be correct.

> there are 'n' equally good ways of solving any real world problem.

This is objectively, mathematically, incorrect. There are optimal solutions, and for some/many problems, there is one optimal solution.

well done for illustrating my point

A team I was on years back had developers like this. My role there was as an infra dev where the main project was to install security daemons on a bunch of hosts. The devs who worked on the project for two years basically made an unusable piece of junk, with infrastructure written in four different languages. In my role I was expected to use what they built, but it never worked, though the opinionated devs didn't believe in storing logs, calling it an "ephemeral" system and we could never know why the damn thing didn't work. So we had to ssh into hosts and install the daemons by hand.

At one point we had a major issue with a client, because our daemons weren't installed on their hosts right before a major event of theirs, and none of the tooling could install on this clients' hosts. So I threw something together over an afternoon that could do it all by frankensteining the other devs' code. It was run-once code to fix the emergency. Lots of selenium garbage.

Since it was one-off, hacky code, I didn't feel it was necessary to put it into git, so I didn't.. until others complained to management and forced me to. From there, I had about four devs dog pile my code, commenting on everything wrong with it - maybe 20-30 comments. I explained that it was one-off code meant to solve a specific problem and of course it was going to be messy, but I got responses like "if your code was made public, you'd want your code to be clean so you can be proud of it!". It was infuriating, considering their system worked maybe 5% of the time.

I'd like to say it was in good-faith, but I really doubt it. At one point while I was there, one of the devs rejected a PR because I had bash in an Ansible role, saying "you don't know if the remote host will have bash installed."

That whole ordeal was enough to leave the company.

I really haven't coded for long compared to some.

I always look at code reviews or just reading / talking about each other's code as a way for us to just get on the same page about how we do things. Make everyone's life easier. "Hey man when we're looping through that thing here is how we usually do it." "Ok cool, I'll do that." Or maybe we have a discussion on why I did it differently this time and how we might address that.

Much of the time I don't "care" or feel strongly what the change or answer is. If we're all doing the same thing / spot a bug sooner, it's just easier for everyone.

But it seems code reviews to some are this sort of battle / proving ground / have a lot of elements of status. I don't get that...

> And finally, I became the exact thing I hated: a toxic asshat throwing his skills around like fists. I don’t do code review for the business, I just like showing the rookies their place. My skills have finally started to pay off.

Or he's just lazy.

It's way harder to build up the people you work with than tear them down. The key ingredients tp the former are patience and empathy. And those qualities are lacking in many managers.

Also, aggressive, opinionated people are often perceived as more intelligent than their more reserved peers. You'd think that the snowmen can't get snowed, but the type of person the author describes seems to be just as vulnerable to the misdirection as others.

In my estimation, most places have the opposite problem: everybody approves the code without looking through it, and the only comments that are left are stylistic problems.

Good code reviews spot real bugs and provide solutions and explanations that help the owner to improve their branch. It's completely constructive and feels like going out of your way to way to help them and paying attention to what is meaningful -- the vibe should be a bit like "doorman at a posh hotel providing excellent service", so not disrespectful at all. Also, if you're nitpicking, it's a sign of lack of focus...

Tis far easier to criticize than create.

Devs often have insufficient time for the standard of perfection code reviews assume: perfect code, formatting, testing, experience, foresight, etc.

Code reviews also have a strong element of bullying, hazing, and people reenacting semi-trauma (that is the cycle of abuse so common in life: trauma makes you lonely, enacting that trauma on others in kind makes you feel less lonely)

I used to joke that in lots of enterprises, it isn't faster, cheaper better pick two, it's actually faster, cheaper, better, follow process, document. Pick about 1 1/2.

PRs definitely bring out the worst in some people ... would head for the exit with a vibe anywhere near like this on the team. sad to me that young devs have to go through this.

> If a guy brings me his code, and it has mistakes, it brings insane pleasure from how smart I feel. [...] And if you tell me that you haven't had this feeling ever, then you're lying. Tell me about higher goals, training rookies and all that - I know you're simply too full of themselves. And if you try to tell me that you learned to defeat that feeling (however it manifests in you), then I must be a pink unicorn.

This has to either be a cultural thing or satire.

I guess if you try to call "feelBetter" right after "throwingShit" you'll never get to feeling better. Maybe that's the point being made?

Is ths really the norm though? If this really happened to you, by all mean voice your story, but it's not fair to make up story just to get a point across, as they could unrealistically pain the software developer community a bunch of a-holes. In reality, most people I worked with are sympathetic as code review is one of the first skills we learn working professionally.

If you're giving soul-crushing feedback and not enjoying it like the OP, one problem could be that perhaps you're not providing the developer with enough detail on the task at hand. Communication isn't easy.

I have been mentoring junior developers for about 10 years, and some more senior ones for the last few years. My ego is more attuned to getting things done than tearing up people's work. The following works really well for me:

1. Never insult people's work, it's counter-productive. (Unless see number 9) 2. Nitpick on convention/style, not implementation, unless the implementation is infeasible. Convention and style will quickly become rote. This forces new developers to pay more attention. 3. If it works as intended and has meaningful tests, MERGE IT. Congratulate them :rocket:! 4. Point out logical pitfalls/caveats by asking "what would happen if". Asking questions starting with "why" triggers people and puts them on the defensive. That's your EQ lesson for today. 5. Through code-review, you can identify a lot of little problems and suggest articles to read that would help the person grow. Examples: misunderstanding async/await vs. thenable in JS. Parallel programming in R/Py. These are distinct, language specific (R has sessions/multicore, Py has the GIL) pieces of knowledge that people can learn easily with a tiny bit of guidance. 5. If you're a better programmer - write the first 1000 lines so that they can fill in the next 10,000 (credit: don't remember, someone tell me?) 6. Even junior developers can get a surprisingly challenging task done if you give them hints (point form) about how you might approach it. 7. Do code reviews in-person (1-1) or if you are tactful with your feedback and have encouraged an environment where making mistakes is acceptable - in a group, that way everyone learns! This is the management version of the DRY principle. 8. One of the biggest problems I see with new developers is "how do I break this problem into smaller pieces". Discuss potential approaches BEFORE the PR. Not after. 9. Fire people that are consistently lazy. When you manage people for a long time it easy to see the difference between someone that needs training and someone that is lazy. You can help a someone that wants to learn, but you can't motivate someone to be interested in something that they aren't already. 10. Cultural differences can make people less likely to speak up when they are stuck - check in with your team!

What would happen if all PRs were submitted/reviewed anonymously, and the feedback was just as impersonal as a stack trace?

Anonymity on the internet doesn't seem to provide much in the way of civility.

As someone for whom face accountability is the only thing preventing me from eviscerating my peers, this sounds like a dream come true.

sounds like the folks that quit didn't have their lives ruined by his attitude and outlook, rather they had their lives improved by being allowed to move away from such toxicity.

ego is one heck of a thing. this guy sounds terribly painful to work with.

i also agree with another commenter, if tearing people down gives you pleasure, you might be wise to seek counseling.

> And if you tell me that you haven’t had this feeling ever, then you’re lying. Tell me about higher goals, training rookies and all that — I know you’re simply too full of themselves. And if you try to tell me that you learned to defeat that feeling (however it manifests in you), then I must be a pink unicorn.

I think that this is called projection.

That line also annoyed me. I think this person has a lot more self reflection to do about their insecurities. I am glad he has begun to recognize there are some issues and I hope he is able to continue to improve himself.

People like this are so toxic that companies must eject them. They have no real added value, they merely harass those that should be helped to grow and learn as they evolve in their positions. Software engineering teams need collaborating peers and mentors not bullies.

Even better is when you get a review like this and get the pleasure of telling the reviewer why they are wrong!

90% of a code review is not about finding THE BUG in the PR but asking questions and making the author find his own bugs or learning something from him. If you are performing a code review hunting for bugs you already lost your humility and think you are better then the PR author.

Have you ever written some text, and re-read it, and it sounded just right, and had someone else read it, and they said "what does this mean"? Sometimes the words you write are sufficient to trigger in your own head the thoughts you've already had, but not enough to make someone else think those same thoughts.

Code can be like that, too. You write code, and it's enough to convince you that it does what you think it does. But someone else reading it can sometimes see the holes that you don't see.

Assuming that person X writes bug-free code is bad, whether X is "you", "me", or "that co-worker".

I don't have to be better than the PR author. I just have to be decently good, and be a different person. That's enough.

And of course I'm looking for bugs. That's the absolute first thing to look for!

Now, true, if I can help the author be able to see their own bugs (asking questions, maybe), then that's probably better than me just lecturing them. Teach them how to think so that they can see it themselves next time.

I'm not saying that you will never find bugs in someone PRs I'm just saying it shouldn't be your first intention, your first intention should be to understand it and be convinced by it. Finding bugs will be a side effect of that. If you reading the code to execute it in your head and find all the weird combination that could trigger a core dump, you should probably check if the author wrote tests for those use cases instead and comment about missing tests. Genuine interest in others work can go a long way compared to imagining how would you solve it like the article author said.

> And if you tell me that you haven’t had this feeling ever, then you’re lying.

I haven't. I love it when I see a great PR that I can just stamp "Approved" on.

The last thing I want to do is close something as so bad it's unsalvageable.

The answer is strong contracts based development. This way, they have the responsibility to make it work behind the public API. If it is garbage, that is their problem. If it needs to be replaced, you have someplace to start with.

Buddy, don’t blame the yhe industry for your argumentative nature. Blame your dad. And unless the company pays you for every line of code you comment, you’re better off spending more time with your kid.

You can be a good Developer AND a nice human being. The choice is not either or. That is the goal one should strive for, not to decide between shooting down a PR or checking-in bad code into the repo.

From 2019. Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19190472 - 155 comments

Be a coach, not an abusive parent.

There are also good comments here about prioritizing the categories of issues into whether important or not.

tried to use bitrix like 6 years ago or so and it was hell, they said absent documentation should be looked for on their forum, and yes it was there, but so much hate even from topic starters, got out 1 month later and it was never too early. im russian myself, i will never work with russian dev products ever.

Sometimes when I read these things, I wonder if I've just gotten really lucky and selected positions at places with well-adjusted, mature, talented software developers? This is in no way representative of any of my experiences both giving and receiving code reviews. I've experienced them in a variety of "ways" -- senior's reviewing mid/juniors "by policy", dedicated teams reviewing certain types of code for certain purposes[0], "randomly distributed" reviews among people of similar skill levels, two-person I review you, you review me always and on and on.

I have been doing this work for far longer than I care to admit. My rejections/non-approvals (both received and provided) land in one of the following categories: (a) Did you notice that? (Oops, D'Oh!), (b) Did you know about that? (Educational), (c) Did you think about that? (Edge Cases), and (d) Why? I work with these men and women day-to-day, so we don't often need to butter up negative responses, we have established that "I trust you can do your job" and my comments do not imply otherwise.

The best way I've heard it said is "We do code reviews because errors in software development are common, regardless of proficiency. I don't write perfect code and having a second set of eyes on my work will only make it better/me look better. Reading a growing code-base by reviewing each other's work benefits everyone."

Of the ways those land, the (b) category is the one that requires a little care (if your goal isn't just to bully/shit on someone's gap in knowledge). I find the way to take the sting out of it is to start off with "Hey, I came across an approach to solving this using (whatever); have you done anything with that? It would be an improvement ... (comment goes on)". I didn't say I came across that approach 15 years ago, that it's what I have decided is "Kindergarten in C# School". Guess what? Someone's read my code and thought the exact same thing. I know this because I've thought them about code I've written as early as 6 months prior. Of course, it's a matter of perspective. I thought that over the one thing I saw that made my toes curl up, never mind that the rest of it was perfectly fine, just like the code I'm currently reviewing.

My favorite, though, is the occasional class/implementation that lands in "Why?". Usually those look like the previous -- a WTF-worthy implementation that the only comment I can send with is "Why was this particular implementation used?" -- and often it requires refactoring ... but every once in a while there's that gem. Some edge case that was cleverly discovered, covered and the developer was left with "This is, literally, the only way that this can be done (given the constraints)." It's the code that's both frighteningly ugly/really cool once you realize why it had to be that way.

[0] I was one of two (but really, one of one) doing the entirety of secure code review for a large multi-national telecom for one brief, terrifying, point.

There's something to be said for "Marine Drill Instructor" responses.

When the DI is screaming profanities at recruits, [s]he is preemptively saving their lives. The manner in which it is done, is actually a component of the training. A significant part of military training, is to deprecate the individual, in favor of the team. The DI is not an individual. They are the sharp end of the elite organization that the recruit hopes to join. The variable is the recruit. The organization is a hardcoded constant.

But most of the world is not in the military.

I understand Linus' expletive-laden rants. I don't like them, and I think he could probably find other ways to enforce Quality, but he does get results. The same for Steve Jobs, and his infamous diatribes. When I worked for a Japanese company, I watched managers literally bring employees to tears, with simple, quiet comments. I worked for a British company, and got experience with the sarcasm-fueled way that British managers work.

As a manager, I worked with firm kindness. I made it clear what was expected as an end result, and did my best to support my employees. It seemed to work for my team, but I also had a particular type of team. My style probably would not have worked in other contexts. I feel that I projected a gestalt, as opposed to a set of individual orders. We acted as a unit; which wasn't easy, as I also worked to preserve the individuality of the members.

As a coder, I am fairly obsessive about Quality. Code quality, documentation quality, design quality, process quality, schedule quality, and end-result quality.

I'm very hard on myself. I set a high bar, and usually meet it.

I've learned not to project it onto others; if at all possible. I understand that my level of Quality is probably not something most companies would consider "cost-effective."

Here's an example: I am writing an app with a screen that displays a big map, and has overlaid views and controls. I spent at least 45 minutes, today, ensuring that one of the controls aligns pixel-perfect with its "alter ego" in the "unfurled" HUD display. It was a pain. I had to set a measurement point in the simulator, run the animation, then review the open display, and make sure they matched. Then, I had to rotate the device, and do the same.

Many, many developers would say "5 or six pixels off; good enough. It's all under a fat finger, anyway." I am not right in the head, though. That kind of thing actually makes me physically uncomfortable. For me, that needs to be 0 pixels; even if it is under a fingertip.

So I will do it for my work. If I find that I can't use the work of others, I won't work with them. I'm very, very picky about dependencies. Fancy Web sites and eye-candy aren't particularly indicative of decent work. Sadly, large user communities no longer seem to be a mark of quality, either. I can't take anyone at their word. I have to test for myself. I have been fortunate to find teams of like-minded folks, but they are rare.

But I won't tear people apart, and I won't lob public insults. I feel that is not helpful. If the only way that I can feel good about myself, is to tear down others, I need to do some work on myself; maybe with a psychotherapist.

Hmm… looks like the OP was probably some shilly Russian fiction.

Still stand by what I wrote, but glad the OP was flagged out.

flagged. do the same if you don't need this nonsense.

What's the issue? I like this article. It's an honest reflection and a clear demonstration of humility. We need more of that in this industry.

(2019)

tldr; In 2019 guy feels guilty about flexing code reviews.

Editorial: code reviews are inherently combative; if criticism doesn't come off petty, it comes off paternalistic which is worse, imo.

God he sound insufferable.

The russian version is somewhat self-deprecating in tone, the translation is not doing good job conveying it.

Thank you for saying that. I read the piece because of your comment and hopefully understood it a bit better because of it.