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Discussion on: Mistakes I made in code reviews and what I do now

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Devin Goble

If I encounter an issue while doing a review, my response varies. Your approach is great, and it's what I do most of the time. If there's something really messed up that might require a gnarly explanation, I'll use another communication channel. I might call them up or arrange a zoom meeting. In a non-COVID world it would be an over the shoulder thing.

The goal is to discuss the issues in a way that doesn't make them feel like I'm calling them out in a code review comment. Then, we can discuss things in a way that allows me to use more contextual and emotional bandwidth than a black and white blob of text so that they go away feeling good about the discussion. Then, I'll go back to the PR and reject it with a comment that goes something like "Please make the changes that we discussed. The rest of this looks great!"

I've still gotten across everything that I needed to, and they don't feel like I shamed them in the permanent record. Obviously this isn't always possible, but it's helped avoid many potential issues.