Name: 3 Ways To Write Deeper, More Impactful Code Review Comments
Uploaded: 2022-04-14T04:50:52+00:00
Duration: 5 min 26 s
Description: In this video, we explore how to give more impactful code reviews by moving beyond surface-level feedback and investing

3 Ways To Write Deeper, More Impactful Code Review Comments

In this video, we explore how to give more impactful code reviews by moving beyond surface-level feedback and investing in deeper understanding and learning from experienced peers. The focus is on practical habits that help us become more thoughtful, effective reviewers.

- **We rely on automation for style and formatting.** It's not our job to catch syntax or stylistic issues—those should be handled by IDEs and CI systems with pre-agreed style rules.
- **We review code with a clear perspective.** Before reading the diff, we mentally plan how *we* would solve the same problem, which helps us offer more meaningful, constructive feedback beyond just approving what “looks fine.”
- **We learn by watching the best.** One of the fastest ways to improve as reviewers is to observe how senior engineers reject code—what they flag, how they communicate, and the patterns they look for.
- **We replicate good habits.** By studying thoughtful reviewers—like those who consistently flag performance issues like mobile frame drops—we can develop our own review instincts and level up faster.
- **We treat reviewing as an intentional skill.** There are no shortcuts; it takes practice, pattern recognition, and curiosity to become great at it. But by mimicking smart peers, we shortcut years of trial and error.

In this video, we explore how to give more impactful code reviews by moving beyond surface-level feedback and investing 

[Masterclass] How To Do Amazing Code Review

Code review is one of the most effective ways to learn as a software engineer, especially for those earlier-in-career. Unfortunately, way too many engineering teams get it wrong with slow review speed and low quality comments.

There is a mountain of information in this presentation, so here's our 5 favorite points (in no particular order):
- **Code review is NOT for catching bugs** - Of course, if you find a bug in a PR (pull request), you should call it out, but that's not the primary purpose of code review. The core benefit of code review is to build up engineering culture, propagating best practices amongst the team and growing newer and more junior engineers.
- **Add deep context to your PRs** - Explain what your pull request does and the reasoning behind your approach. Also, *include a test plan.* A test plan is a demo showcasing what your code changes do; try to make it a video/gif, which is especially powerful if you work on front-end (Android/iOS/web). If you can't do a video, try attaching a screenshot or a set of commands to run tests.
- **One diff, one thesis** - Every PR should be focused and atomic: Don't jam the entire new feature you just coded up in a single 1,000+ line PR. Huge commits are hard to review, and your teammates will hate you for it. For the vast majority of cases, you can break down your PRs to 25-250 lines of code.
- **Read others' code reviews** - Similar to so many other things in tech, stand on the shoulders of giants where you can. With code review, this means looking at how senior+ engineers on your team comment on reviews. Try to find patterns in the issues they're finding and incorporate it into how you review code. Revisions that have been rejected with changes requested are a gold mine for this learning.
- **Code review MUST be fast** - When we say fast, we mean that feedback should arrive in <24 hours. What a lot of engineers don't realize is that code review delay is multiplicative: Sometimes commit will need 3-5 revisions before they're able to be merged. If turnaround is 2+ days, this can easily lead to commits taking weeks to land, which is far too slow.

A lot of the terminology in this video is Meta specific. If you're more used to GitHub:
- Diff review = Pull request
- Diff = Commit

Related resources:
- ["How to give better code reviews without full business context?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/vio35mw1SYWM8AYojB2w/how-to-give-better-code-reviews-without-full-business-context/)
- ["How to review code in another language/ from another team?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/B79W3aWc8xMB8cCULFdJ/how-to-review-code-in-another-language-from-another-team/)
- [Presentation Slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1koyIR9K_CtESD7Vnh3GQOE-svFW-ngrQeEAduSAoH0w/edit)