"Reviewing code is one of the most important parts of an engineer’s job at Tumblr, even more so than writing code. Our codebases are shared by hundreds of engineers, so it’s critical to make sure we’re not just writing the best code we can, but that the code being written can be understood by others. Taking the time to review someone else’s code is the most critical opportunity to ensure all of that is happening...

How I personally review code has changed considerably over my few years at Tumblr. Before working at Tumblr, I wrote code mostly by myself and reviewed code with a very small set of people. Shifting to a huge codebase with hundreds of contributors was a big change. Thankfully I’ve had some good teachers. I went from reviewing maybe one pull request a month to currently...

"Reviewing code is one of the most important parts of an engineer’s job at Tumblr, even more so than writing code. Our codebases are shared by hundreds of engineers, so it’s critical to make sure we’re not just writing the best code we can, but that the code being written can be understood by others. Taking the time to review someone else’s code is the most critical opportunity to ensure all of that is happening...

How I personally review code has changed considerably over my few years at Tumblr. Before working at Tumblr, I wrote code mostly by myself and reviewed code with a very small set of people. Shifting to a huge codebase with hundreds of contributors was a big change. Thankfully I’ve had some good teachers. I went from reviewing maybe one pull request a month to currently reviewing an average of 25 pull requests a week. Here are some of the principles that help me keep my reviews timely and helpful...