
PullRequest (YC S17) wants to be your company code reviewer - senko
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/09/pullrequest-wants-to-be-your-company-code-reviewer/amp/
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senko
I am skeptical that this can work well.

Having deep understanding of the code in question is essential for a good code
review. Not just the code under review, but the wider scope of the project.
This helps spot architectural problems, inconsistencies, unearth hidden
assumptions or assumption breakages, and the like.

Reviewing the code as a drive-by loses all of those benefits and boils down to
focusing on the code at hand, coding style, nitpicks, and implicitly assuming
the code fits well with the rest [0].

I did hundreds (if not thousands) of pull requests, and reviews I've done
where I have been intimately familiar with the existing code base were
consistently much better than the reviews I did as an outsider to the project
- even when, knowing this, I spent a lot more effort on the reviews as an
outsider.

The founders seem to recognize this (it's mentioned in the TC article) and
mention pairing up reviewers with the same companies, but this IMHO will not
be enough, unless these reviewers are basically on retainer and work
regularly, and often, with the same company.

I'd love to be proven wrong, so good luck PullRequest team!

[0] Edit to add: enforcing consitent coding style and pointing out code smells
is certainly useful. These however can be automated to some extent (linters
and services like CodeClimate).

