Ask HN: Do you read your own PR?

#1

Post by bubblebeard » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 4:11 AM UTC

As part of my QA process, I always read through my own pull request before submitting it, to ensure I fix any obvious mistakes I made before it's reviewed by my colleagues.

No one I've ever worked with seems to do the same, am I alone in this behavior?

Re: Ask HN: Do you read your own PR?

#2

Post by shortrounddev2 » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 4:33 AM UTC

I check the commit messages to make sure i didnt use my personal git credentials (as i sometimes do), i comb through the git diff to make sure the changes are all what theyre supposed to be. i avoid whitespace or stylistic changes because they distract from the main point. I run git diff and git status maybe 10 times befire i submit a PR

my coworkers, from what i can tell, are much more incorrectly confident in the quality of their PRs

Re: Ask HN: Do you read your own PR?

#3

Post by WantonQuantum » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 4:57 AM UTC

I definitely read through the changes in my PRs to make sure I haven't done anything obviously wrong.

Re: Ask HN: Do you read your own PR?

#4

Post by yawgmoth » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 5:03 AM UTC

Always, and sometimes I'll add authors notes as comments on the PR. This is actually one reason I dislike "all threads resolved" as a criterion for approving PRs (or specifically GitLab PRs).

Re: Ask HN: Do you read your own PR?

#5

Post by motorest » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 6:15 AM UTC

> No one I've ever worked with seems to do the same, am I alone in this behavior?

You are not alone. I also read and re-read my PRs, and it pains me when people from my team post them with a lame and mysterious "misc fixups" comment.

This turns into something particularly bad when you try to audit a change and both the commit message and the PR say nothing about nothing.

Re: Ask HN: Do you read your own PR?

#6

Post by abstractspoon » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 7:17 AM UTC

I always do this especially to weed out unnecessary changes made during an exploratory phase