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I ruin developers’ lives with my code reviews and I'm sorry

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31–40 of 164 posts

Re: I ruin developers’ lives with my code reviews and I'm sorry

#32
post #9

This guy sounds like a massive, toxic asshole. I'm tired of dealing with people like this. It does not have to be this hard. Tech companies should fire more people just for being jerks. > I was mad that, while I spent my nights learning F#, my daughter started calling everyone around “fathers”. Huh, you mean missing out on the good parts of life while martyring yourself for a company that does not give a shit about y…

This piece is so obviously written as satire / hyperbole that I'm tempted to think your response is as well?

Re: I ruin developers’ lives with my code reviews and I'm sorry

#33

>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. Are you kidding? Call me a liar if you want, but I don't feel that way when doing code reviews, and never ha…

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Re: I ruin developers’ lives with my code reviews and I'm sorry

#35
post #9

This guy sounds like a massive, toxic asshole. I'm tired of dealing with people like this. It does not have to be this hard. Tech companies should fire more people just for being jerks. > I was mad that, while I spent my nights learning F#, my daughter started calling everyone around “fathers”. Huh, you mean missing out on the good parts of life while martyring yourself for a company that does not give a shit about y…

I thought you were exaggerating but you're not; the guy sounds like a real pain to work with.

Re: I ruin developers’ lives with my code reviews and I'm sorry

#36

This guy ties his ego to his code, and assumes everyone does the same. The proposed solution is to not devalue the person by devaluing the code. This seems exactly backwards to me. Disconnecting ego from the work was the first big lesson I had when I started working in software. I hear parallel ideas from friends across industries, in fact an electrical contractor explained to me how he expects it of his apprentices…

> Disconnecting ego from the work was the first big lesson I had when I started working in software.

100% agree. Any code you write for your employer is not your code - you should be comfortable leaving it forever tomorrow if a better opportunity presents itself elsewhere.

Re: I ruin developers’ lives with my code reviews and I'm sorry

#37
post #9

This guy sounds like a massive, toxic asshole. I'm tired of dealing with people like this. It does not have to be this hard. Tech companies should fire more people just for being jerks. > I was mad that, while I spent my nights learning F#, my daughter started calling everyone around “fathers”. Huh, you mean missing out on the good parts of life while martyring yourself for a company that does not give a shit about y…

I think the author is trying to surface the conclusion you've made, but I'm not sure it merits such an emotional response from you.

The article is thought provoking. It makes good points, even if you don't like the author. I can relate to a lot of his examples.

Re: I ruin developers’ lives with my code reviews and I'm sorry

#38

"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." I can tell you I haven't had this feeling ever, but not for reasons I'm proud of. I hate doing code reviews. I have hated doing every one. I have disliked having to type every comment I have made on a code review. Each time I hope that ev…

> After further thought, I think a fundamental difference is I really want to see my coworkers succeed, and don't enjoy their failure. Also I dislike all forms of toil.

I'm in both of these camps too. I think I'd dislike code reviews if I didn't remind myself:

* Code my coworkers write is code I don't have to write, so it's saving me toil.

* Issues I catch in review are issues that won't lead to late night debugging sessions catching heisenbugs on the eve of shipping our product, so it's saving me some of the worst kinds of toil.

A little work now to save me a lot of work later. And I've been burned by suddenly getting stuck maintaining & bugfixing code that I got lax about reviewing. Each issue I catch, I think "thank goodness I caught that now - that'd be a pain in the ass to debug".

It also makes me genuinely appreciate review feedback catching all the dumb shit I might do, which can really help when your quick change turns into a slog of missed edge cases, "can you fix X while you're in there", etc.

Re: I ruin developers’ lives with my code reviews and I'm sorry

#40
And this is why we hire for empathy, and pair-program instead of doing code reviews. Code reviews and features branches don't cause this type of behaviour, but they are a fertile field for this to flourish.

I'd rather have ten mediocre developers who can be part of a team than one gifted diva.

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