The Ultimate Code Review Blog Post Series
Tags: codenewbie, coding, beginners, programming
Published: 2019-07-25 13:17:11

---
title: The Ultimate Code Review Blog Post Series
published: true
tags: #codenewbie, #coding, #beginners, #programming,   
canonical_url: https://www.michaelagreiler.com/code-review-blog-post-series/
cover_image: https://www.michaelagreiler.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2.png
series: The Ultimate Code Review Blog Post Series
---

![Two kids learning together as a symbol for code reviews](https://i1.wp.com/www.michaelagreiler.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2.png?fit=800%2C400&ssl=1)<figcaption>Code Review: Lessons learned working at Microsoft<br>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/YgOCJz9uGMk?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">NESA by Makers</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/search/photos/code-review?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a> <br></figcaption>

The post [The Ultimate Code Review Blog Post Series](https://www.michaelagreiler.com/code-review-blog-post-series/) appeared first on [Doctor McKayla](https://www.michaelagreiler.com).

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In this code review blog post series, I share my experiences and lessons learned about code reviews. Primarily, I show you code reviewing best practices to boost your code quality. But, you also learn which pitfalls to avoid while performing code reviewing.

The foundation of those code review blog posts is my experience analyzing and improving code review practices and tooling at Microsoft. I worked with hundreds of engineers and analyzed thousands of code reviews. You can see this code review blog post series as an intense crash course to learn about code reviewing best practices or as an opportunity to reflect on your own review practices.

![](https://i1.wp.com/www.michaelagreiler.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/E-Book-Preview.jpg?w=800&ssl=1)<figcaption> <br><a href="https://www.michaelagreiler.com/code-review-e-book/">Exclusive Code Review Best Practice e-Book</a> for my subscribers. </figcaption>

I prepared an exclusive [Code Review e-Book](https://www.michaelagreiler.com/code-review-e-book/) for my e-mail subscribers to help you remember the code review best practices. I also added other great insights and summaries about code reviews. Get the 12 page insights to code reviews now. Not a subscriber yet? Just sign-up.

## Code review overview

Code reviewing is a widely adopted and adapted engineering practice. Its main aim is to improve software quality. In addition, sharing knowledge among team members is another important benefit of code reviewing.

Even though code reviewing provides several other benefits, you have to be aware to follow best practices. Otherwise, you might tap into several pitfalls.

## Microsoft’s code review process

I have been working at Microsoft as a software engineer and researcher for several years. My main focus was to analyze and improve engineering practices and tools. One of the key areas I focused on was code reviewing.

In this blog series, I am going to share the key insights and lessons learned about code reviewing at Microsoft. All of them are backed by research and are grounded in actual experiences and knowledge from high performing engineering teams. At Microsoft, I performed several large-scale studies involving thousands of engineers and millions of code review comments. The lessons learned presented in this code review blog post series are derived from those empirical studies.

![People working on computers in a group](https://i2.wp.com/www.michaelagreiler.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/code_review_nesa-by-makers-737053-unsplash.jpg?w=800&ssl=1)<figcaption>Peer code review happens with the help of tools, or also “over the shoulder” <br>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/o3tIY5pIork?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">Rachel</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/search/photos/learning?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a> </figcaption>

## Blog post series

The series consists of 9 blog posts. You can read each one of them separately. Still, you might get the best out of it reading it consecutively.

In the coming weeks, I will post about:

1. **[Code Reviews at Microsoft](https://www.michaelagreiler.com/code-reviews-at-microsoft-how-to-code-review-at-a-large-software-company/)**  
In this post, I explain how a common review process looks like at Microsoft, and which code review tool is mostly used at Microsoft.
2. **[Code review pitfalls: learn which problems slow your team down](https://www.michaelagreiler.com/code-review-pitfalls-slow-down/)**  
In this post, I deep dive into the main code review pitfalls teams face when practicing code reviews.
3. [**Proven Code Review Best Practices**](https://www.michaelagreiler.com/code-review-best-practices/)  
Learn which code review best practices make your team productive and boost code review feedback value.
4. **[How to give great feedback](https://www.michaelagreiler.com/great-code-review-feedback/)**  
The benefits of code reviews rise and fall with the quality and value of the feedback. In this post, I show you proven ways to boost your code review feedback.
5. **[Code Reviews at Google](https://www.michaelagreiler.com/code-reviews-at-google/)**
Code reviews at Google are lightweight and fast. Actually, code reviews are completed in under 5 hours. That’s much faster than for most other large software companies. In this post, I show you why.
6. **[Code Review Checklist](https://www.michaelagreiler.com/code-review-checklist/)** 
If you want to boost your productivity and your rigor at the same time, a code review checklist is what you are after. This one is also downloadable.
7. **How to give useful code review comments?**  
Not every review comment turns out useful. Comments that are not useful should be avoided. In this article, I explain what really makes for a useful comment.
8. **Code review trade-offs**
Even if you are aware of all best practices, there are several trade-offs you have to keep in mind. For example, do you favor review speed or review rigor? In this article, I dive into this topic.
9. **Wrap-up post**

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**Don’t miss out on any of the posts** of this code review blog post series by **[subscribing](https://www.michaelagreiler.com/subscribe/)** to my mailing list.


As a subscriber, you profit, in addition to my awesome emails about software engineering, also from exclusive treats I prepare for you, such as my [code review e-Book](https://www.michaelagreiler.com/code-review-e-book/).

And I'm [active on Twitter](https://twitter.com/mgreiler). Let us connect there.

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The post [The Ultimate Code Review Blog Post Series](https://www.michaelagreiler.com/code-review-blog-post-series/) appeared first on [Doctor McKayla](https://www.michaelagreiler.com).