Re: What's cooking in git.git (Apr 2018, #02; Tue, 17)

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 18, 2018, 01:04 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqpo2xjpf6.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAGZ79kb=A6BsdrtH=2F0634+r5ejG9Ce9U0mry65jkNnscu1nA@mail.gmail.com>

Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

>>  What's the doneness of this thing?  I didn't recall seeing any
>>  response, especially ones that demonstrated the reviewer carefully
>>  read and thought about the issues surrounding the code.  Not that I
>>  spotted any problems in these patches myself, though.
>
> Stolee and Brandon provided a "quick LGTM" type of review
> https://public-inbox.org/git/20180409232536.GB102627@google.com/
> https://public-inbox.org/git/9ddfee7e-025a-79c9-8d6b-700c65a14067@gmail.com/

Yup. Giving positive reviews is harder than giving constructive criticism. Much harder.

As readers cannot tell from a "quick LGTM" between "I didn't read it but it did not smell foul" and "I read it thoroughly, understood how the solution works, it was presented well, and agree with the design and implementation---there is nothing to add", the reviewers need to come up with some way to express that it is the latter case rather than the former.

I would not claim that I've perfected my technique to do so, but when responding to such a "good" series, I rephrase the main idea in the series in my own words to show that I as a reviewer read the series well enough to be able to do so, perhaps with comparison with possible alternatives I could think of and dicussion to argue that the solution presented in the series is better, in an attempt to demonstrate that I am qualified to say "this one is good" with good enough understanding of both the issue the series addresses and the solution in the series.