The Do’s and Don’ts of Code Reviews

Reduce team friction by having healthier code review cultures

Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash

Code reviews are an essential part of the development process. They help to maintain code integrity, quality, styling, prevent bugs, and even help us learn from others. The big barrier with code reviews is that they are usually done in an impersonal matter — such as leaving comments on a platform like GitHub, Bitbucket, or whatever version control you use on your team.

Since code reviews are done via text — the way we write, the words we choose, the mood we have when reading or writing or anything really can easily create friction with our teammates. To avoid this, we have to be mindful of how we approach code reviews. As such, I’ve compiled a list of Do’s and Don’ts to follow during code reviews.

As a Reviewer

Here’s a list of behaviors to do and void when reviewing other people's code.

Do’s

• First of all, be polite.
• Be humble, and offer your help.
• If it’s not wrong and the solution is based on preference and opinion, then let it be — unless your team has a specific styling rule on how to solve certain problems.
• Ask for clarification when you have doubts.