No code reviews by default
raycast.com
No code reviews by default
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Re: No code reviews by default
#2I always really enjoy reading both the Raycast and Linear engineering blogs because they’ve really got a great approach to empowering distributed teams, and giving engineers the autonomy to work well.
I can’t necessarily say this approach would work everywhere but it’s nice to see companies critiquing and challenging methodologies.
Re: No code reviews by default
#3I'm glad this works better for them, or at least they feel that it does. I'd also bet that they're either a small minority of teams that jell so well that they manage to scale a codebase without it turning into a disgustingly inconsistent mess; or that indeed their codebase qualifies as such or is still too small for the effects to be very visible.
Code reviews are not a tool intended mainly to catch bugs. Types, automated tests and manual tests are going to do the bulk of your bug-catching after all. Code reviews' more relevant purpose is to act as QA for the code itself far more than it is to verify if the code achieves what it sets out to do. This is in service of both maintainability (which impacts your ability to make future changes and staff retention) as well as performance (by introducing the chance for another dev to detect suboptimal approaches).
Once your teams grow, code piles up, and static analysis can't cover all your bases, either your team corroborates the code that you write matches/defines group standards; or each developer's careful design accumulates as "organic growth" carefully duct taped together to barely work.
And just to state the obvious, code reviews are merely a tool to achieve this. Pair programming is another.
Re: No code reviews by default
#4> Pull requests don't prevent bugs
Pull requests find bugs on every software and hardware team I have ever participated in. I cannot imagine living without this process. PRs increase knowledge and awareness of features. I fully concede that it is discouraging in some circumstances, but those tend to be the exception, not the rule. Most often it’s discouraging around a core set of individuals who bring more dogmatism and policing to PRs, which aren’t entirely welcome.
Power to this team, but either they’ve discovered the holy grail, or they will be compensating for this in some other internal process, certainly not user feedback.
Re: No code reviews by default
#5Luckily Raycast work in an unregulated industry. In a lot of regulated industries this would not be an option as 4-eye reviews are a mandatory policy requirement.
I also don't know how smart it is to brag about, seems like just asking for something to go wrong.
Re: No code reviews by default
#6I think this would work really well for a small and experienced team, though where I work, we have a lot of developers fresh out of college, and I would be pretty nervous setting them loose without close review of their work.
Re: No code reviews by default
#7He mentions "trust" a lot.
Is that why we do code reviews, because we don't trust each other? I find this attitude problematic. We do code reviews because humans make mistakes. Requirements can be misinterpreted. Different work in progress can be in conflict with each other. Reviews are a good way to learn from each other and keep abreast of what work is occurring outside your own bubble. Not doing code reviews because of "trust" kind of misses the point.
I find even just cursory and brief code reviews are beneficial and often pick up on issues. It also creates a more collaborative team and gives me a reason to communicate with devs I might not otherwise communicate with, even if that is just a brief comment on a PR.
Rejected.
Re: No code reviews by default
#8> Pull requests don't prevent bugs Pull requests find bugs on every software and hardware team I have ever participated in. I cannot imagine living without this process. PRs increase knowledge and awareness of features. I fully concede that it is discouraging in some circumstances, but those tend to be the exception, not the rule. Most often it’s discouraging around a core set of individuals who bring more dogmatism…
Couldn't agree more. I'm fairly certain that I'm a better coder and team member than I used to be because I was part of both ends of many many PRs.
Re: No code reviews by default
#9I’m curious how they avoid pushing changes that break the build. Maybe they have some other reason that this doesn’t happen or is hard but having a large number of people trying to collaborate on a constantly broken repo is not a recipe for productivity.
I also wonder if there are typically 0 reviews or typically 1 — that is, are people even reading their own changes before they push them.
Re: No code reviews by default
#10> Pull requests don't prevent bugs.
Is this some anti-vax satire?
Of course pull requests (code reviews) reduce bugs. And of course some slip through. It doesn't need to be 100% to be useful.