Delivery and Deployment

T14 Conducting Humane Code Reviews

10/20/2020

3:00pm - 4:15pm

Level: Introductory to Intermediate

Adrienne Tacke

Software Engineer, International Speaker, and Author

Code reviews are a must in a proper development workflow, but what happens when performing or receiving one becomes as fun as getting a root canal? Instead of contributing meaningful suggestions, developers often use these reviews as an opportunity to rehash old arguments or show their "superiority".

From personal experience as a software engineer over the past 8 years to the stories my professional network shares, I know that code reviews can be a major pain point for many development teams.

In this talk, I'll describe the common mistakes we make while performing a code review and how it can cause unwanted side effects among a team and their codebase. I'll also describe worthwhile solutions to these issues so that they are less likely to occur. By the end of this talk, dev teams should be able to conduct code reviews fairly, catch substantiated mistakes, make productive suggestions, and still like each other afterward!

You will learn:

  • Four pragmatic code review goals to strive for
  • Understand objective versus subjective code review comments
  • Understand what tools and practices can be used to decrease unfair code review processes