Ask HN: How to deal with hostile code review?

4 points by codingstuffs 6y ago ↗ HN

The small startup I work for is starting to do a refactoring/version 2 of its product, as such the owner is going through the code base and marking areas for improvement.

He has marked a few parts of the code that I worked on, and one in particular has the comment "//codingstuffs: This code makes me want to cry. Try xxx coding style??"

Now, I will be the first to admit that likely my code sometimes can be a little messier, but the coding style he prefers the pyramid of doom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_doom_(programming)) and I had been taught this was not a good thing.

I'm happy to code to his particular style, but I can't help but feel hurt by the comments. Does anyone have suggestions as to how to separate themselves more from their code/work so that I can not take this as personally?

2 comments

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wizzwizz4 6y ago ↗

Ask the owner to be a bit nicer. You can say something like:

> While we all make snide comments about our own code, it really hurts when it comes from somebody else; this is distracting me from the actual suggestions you're giving. Could you try to be nicer with the comments you leave during code review?

This isn't a problem with you.

codingstuffs 6y ago ↗

Thank you - I appreciate the response, I was struggling to come up with what to say, but I think you hit all the points there, especially with the fact that it distracts me from the actual suggestions on the work.