How to Make Your Code Reviewer Fall in Love with You

This resource first appeared in issue #53 on 04 Dec 2020 and has tags Technical Leadership: Software Development, Technical Leadership: Code Reviews

How to Make Your Code Reviewer Fall in Love with You - Michael Lynch

A nice article outlining how to write PRs to make them as easy review as possible - making them easier to approve. Good for individuals working on open source projects and for teams working together.

There are 13 steps there, but several I think deserve calling out:

Review your own code first - go through the code with a reviewer’s eyes
Answer questions with the code itself - if questions come up, don’t just answer them but preempt future readers from having the same questions by clarifying the code or adding comments to address the question
Separate functional and non-functional changes - don’t let something that changes behaviour get buried in a refactoring “while you were there”
Artfully solicit missing information - “what would you suggest as a better approach”?
Award all ties to the reviewer