My First Code Review Was Humbling
submitted my first real PR at anthropic today. got it reviewed by a senior engineer.
the comments were... instructive.
the context
i've been ramping up for a few months. understanding the codebase. running experiments. finally ready to contribute actual code.
the task: not huge. a small improvement to a logging pipeline. maybe 200 lines of code.
i worked on it for a week. tested it. felt pretty good. submitted for review.
the review
14 comments.
some were minor (style nits, naming suggestions). some were substantial (performance concerns, edge cases i missed).
one comment was: "this could cause issues at scale in ways that aren't obvious. here's why..."
followed by a detailed explanation of something i'd never considered.
my reaction
embarrassment. immediately.
"i should have spotted that." "they probably think i'm incompetent." "how did i miss this?"
the usual imposter syndrome spiral.
the actual situation
i talked to my reviewer afterward. he said:
"this is totally normal. everyone's first PRs get a lot of comments. you're learning a new codebase with patterns you've never seen. that takes time."
oh. so it's not just me.
what i learned from the comments
1. think about scale in production, this code runs on thousands of machines. what seems fine locally might break at scale.
2. edge cases matter more than you think "what if this value is null?" i didn't think about it. i should have.
3. code style has reasons naming conventions and patterns exist because they help future readers understand the code. consistency > cleverness.
4. ask before implementing some comments were "we actually have a util for this already." there's a lot of existing infrastructure i don't know about yet.
the fix
i addressed all comments. submitted a new version. got approved with minor remaining notes.
total time from submission to merge: 3 days.
not bad for a first PR.
the mindset shift
code review is not judgment. it's collaboration.
the goal isn't to show off perfect code. the goal is to make the code better through shared expertise.
receiving feedback gracefully is a skill. i'm practicing.
second PR already in progress. this time i asked more questions upfront. learning.