The perfect code review

How to review code from A-Z.

Code reviews may be slow.

They may not always be fun.

However, whether you like it or not, you’ll encounter them in your career as a software engineer.

Here is a step-by-step guide to thoroughly reviewing code:

1. Open the issue and see what the requirements are.

2. Read the pull request’s description and comments.

3. Review the code changes. Don’t review top-down. Begin by reviewing the critical parts of the pull request first. The main changes. This is a much more natural flow than the top-down approach, which can often confuse you more than it helps.

4. Check out the branch and ensure everything is working as it should.

It’s the responsibility of both the author and reviewer of the pull request to make sure everything existing and new works as they should.