Can you see the forest for the trees?

How often have you seen developers stuck in code review discussing some method optimization or "code excellence"? Spending hours or even days trying to make code perfect? Did that really help build a well-architected solution?

Developers often get stuck in small details and completely lose sight of the bigger picture. That's a very common mistake that I see in engineering teams. As a result, there are perfect classes or functions and complete mess in overall structure.

A proper review should always start with a bird’s-eye view:
🔸 Component structure: Are changes implemented in the components\services that are actually responsible for this logic?
🔸 Module structure: Are changes in the modules you expect them to be (public vs private, pkg vs internal, etc.)?
🔸 Public contracts: Review how your APIs will be used by other parties. Are they clear, convenient, easy to use, and easy to extend?
🔸 Naming: Are module, class and function names clear and easy to understand? Don't they duplicate existing entities?
🔸 Data model: Is the domain modeled correctly? Does the model follow single responsibility principle?
🔸 Testing: Are main cases covered? What about negative scenarios? Do we have proper failure handling approach?

In most cases, there’s no point in reviewing code details until the items above are finalized. The code will likely be rewritten, maybe even more than once.
That’s why specific lines of code should be the last thing to check.

Details are cheap to fix.
Structure and contracts are not.

#engineering #codereview