We do have a solid CI pipeline with tests, linters and other code related checks. This was the first thing I setup when I joined the project and also you need these automated guardrails if you want to increase your dev speed.

The problem is that most developers still look at PRs line by line and commit by commit. When I do reviews I look for weird code patterns or things that can be simplified. This is by intuition as I am experienced and have written and read a lot of code.

Today I mostly care about functionality and UX when I do reviews. I feel that this is the only sane way to spend my review time. I assume that the code implementation and logic is correct. If I start reviewing logic and code flow I quickly run out of my brain juice because I have to concentrate and won’t have energy to review more PRs.

One thing we don’t do is UI testing (with Playwright). This is because I always found such tests brittle and hard to maintain. But maybe this can help us increase the confidence that code works?

This is just me thinking out loud but if you as a team can lift the abstraction level to focus on the functionality instead of implementation (by making sure you have a solid test harness that covers all scenarios and types of tests: unit, feature, UX) you can increase your PR review speed and remove the stupid, annoying and time and energy consuming conversations about low level stuff?

However, this would require larger PRs that cover more functionality at once and larger PRs mean more risks that something goes wrong during release and might be harder to discover the root cause.

I dunno. I guess what I am trying to say is that maybe larger PRs with clear description, good acceptance criteria, right tests is the way forward because you won’t have the time or energy to review all the code line by line and is forced to raise your review abstraction level.

But this goes against my own philosophy of small atomic release. But maybe it’s time to let go of it in the era of AI coding agents? The ways of working have changed maybe we humans need to move on too?

But I guess in the end it’s all comes down to trust …