Things I Learnt The Hard Way - Code Reviews Are Not For Style

When doing code reviews, do not focus on style; focus on design things that look a bit weird.

Code reviews are designed to spread knowledge around the team, with focus on construction and problem description. Does the sequence of code gives you an understanding on what it is trying to do? Does it contains something you know it will make things harder to read in the future? Does it miss the point?

That's the things you should focus.

If the author of the code missed a space here, left a blank line there... that's of no consequence in a code review. This is not the thing to discuss in the code review.

And people hate people who go through code reviews just to point missing/extra spaces and lines.

On the other hand, if you find something weird in the code which is something you want the author to recheck, then you're free to comment that "it would be good" if they fix the style. But that's it.

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