Al,
> But if Meem can checkout the file and make the changes in less time
> than it takes him to write the review comment - does it make sense for
> him (and every other reviewer) to write a seemingly endless set of
> change requests?
> My point is simply that it does not make sense for a reviewer to spend
> 10 or 20 minutes writing an email when he/she, as a subject matter
> expert (SME), could resolve the "inconsistency" in less than half that
> time.
As someone who has done a lot of reviews, I truly sympathize with
your viewpoint. It can often be very frustrating how long it takes
to do a review, so much so that you *desperately* want to write the
code for the reviewee so the review can end and you can move on.
But there are two big problems with doing that, so I usually don't:
1) There might be a good reason for why the reviewee made the changes
the way they did. Some reviewees are similarly impatient with
reviews; when they have code spit back at them in a code review,
they automatically adopt it so they can move on and don't consider
that it, too, could be suspect. Other reviewees won't know what
the reviewer's concern is; they just have an alternate
implementation (after all, anything more would have been a waste
of time). A reviewer and reviewee aren't going to get anywhere
unless they establish a common understanding.
2) The reviewee doesn't learn anything. If the only point of the
review process was to get project X into the gate, then yeah, hand
them the right code without taking the time to explain. But
you've written off the person. It might take 10-20 minutes more
to give them proper review comments, but in the end they
understand your concerns and can operate more efficiently and more
independently in the future.
I view Meem taking the time to give the feedback he has, and his
desire to understand the rationale for the originally proposed
changes, as both respect for and investment in Roland's abilities.
Is that a waste of time?
Dave
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