Re:Bad ideas that aren't bad anymore
by bryanrasmussen on Thursday November 12, 2026 @04:25AM
(#50464931)
>Why do so many people think that code reviews are primarily about mistrust or spotting mistakes?
because people generally think things they are told, basic memetics.
There are a set of things code review is for, this set of things is for written information transfer and rather too large for speech, so when choosing to speak about what things code review is for people choose some, shared understanding is slightly more abstract than catching and reducing bugs so catching and reducing bugs gets repeated slightly more, and the next generation of people hearing what code review is for repeat it.
As a general rule I have seldom seen bugs get caught in review, I have caught a few bugs in review, but far fewer than the amount of code I have reviewed. I have very few times had bugs caught in review of my code, this is not because I don't make bugs, they just get caught out in testing.
Normally my experience is much of the communication I receive about code I've written is generally bike-shedding, probably 70-80%, above that it starts to become things we can absolutely agree is useful in some way (even if not at the bug catching stage), bug catching is maybe 0.01% of the comments.
because people generally think things they are told, basic memetics.
There are a set of things code review is for, this set of things is for written information transfer and rather too large for speech, so when choosing to speak about what things code review is for people choose some, shared understanding is slightly more abstract than catching and reducing bugs so catching and reducing bugs gets repeated slightly more, and the next generation of people hearing what code review is for repeat it.
As a general rule I have seldom seen bugs get caught in review, I have caught a few bugs in review, but far fewer than the amount of code I have reviewed. I have very few times had bugs caught in review of my code, this is not because I don't make bugs, they just get caught out in testing.
Normally my experience is much of the communication I receive about code I've written is generally bike-shedding, probably 70-80%, above that it starts to become things we can absolutely agree is useful in some way (even if not at the bug catching stage), bug catching is maybe 0.01% of the comments.