Thread by @ddoomen

Assuming you agree with my earlier point about the importance of code reviews, you'll likely also agree that it's equally important to provide constructive, useful, and unambiguous comments. You need to make it clear whether something is a dealbreaker for you, just...

...a suggestion, an opportunity for refactoring, or something that requires further discussion.

And it's not just to help younger developers who might look up to you and can't yet make those distinctions. It's also a way to force yourself to consider how important a comment...

...is and whether it might be better to omit it altogether.

That's why I prefer to use emojis to help clarify my expectations for a comment and prevent myself from nitpicking or imposing my preferences on others. For example, I use 🤔 to trigger a discussion on a suggestion...

...or an alternative solution. If I want to plant a thought for later, I might use a 🌱. Refactoring opportunities are prefixed by ♻️, and ideas for leaving the codebase in a slightly better state are marked with 🏕️. Yes, it's a bit silly, but it also makes reviewing...

...fun again.

And next to that, make sure you use a source control system that allows you to group review comments, request re-reviews, and review individual commits. @GitHub and GitLab can do that, but Azure DevOps definitely not.

What do you do to make code reviews effective?