Barely Reviewed Code

Years ago I was giving a talk on software development and asked the audience how long it takes to review a PR that has 10 lines changed. Answers were in the minutes to tens of minutes range. I then asked how long it takes to review a PR that has 1,000 lines changed. Some people said hours, but a few people said seconds. I've often taken the latter, pessimistic view. Not because I don't think engineers want to do a good job, but because I know human behavior. Most humans will get bored, lose focus, and end up skimming through a large amount of code. Many (most?) people don't want to spend all that time, after all they have they their own code to write. They'll just approve the PR and assume testing will catch any major issues. Read the rest of Barely Reviewed Code

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Barely Reviewed Code is an episode from voiceofthedba's podcast by Steve Jones.

This episode is 02:50 long.

This episode was published on Apr 7, 2026.

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