Code Reviews Make You Better

Code reviews are a well-established practice for most software teams, a crucial step before merging or deploying changes. Yet, all too often, I see developers approaching them like tedious paperwork or worse, a dreaded judgment session.

Given this negative framing, it’s perhaps unsurprising that some start to resent the process, viewing it as a pointless or painful hurdle.

And that’s a real shame.

Because when approached with the right mindset, code reviews are one of the most powerful tools we have for individual growth, shared understanding, and stronger teams.

What are Code Reviews?

Code reviews (or peer reviews) are the process where developers examine each other’s code.

Ideally, they provide a fresh perspective, an opportunity to ask clarifying questions, and a mechanism for improving the codebase. They enable us to catch errors, identify edge cases, and foster knowledge sharing – not just about the code itself, but also about our problem-solving and communication styles.

That’s what they can be. But they often aren’t.

Why Reality Falls Short

It’s easy for reviews to devolve into a chore to rush through, a surface-level skim, a quick “LGTM”(Looks good to me), or a negative and intimidating experience.

I believe there are three key areas to this problem:

We’ll take a look at each of these, starting with the right mindset.

The Right Mindset

The Oxford Dictionary defines mindset as “the established set of attitudes held by someone.” It’s a way of thinking that shapes how we approach our work, our relationships, and our lives.

With code reviews, as with everything, the right mindset is crucial. It can turn a chore into an opportunity, a burden into a gift.

Psychologist Carol Dweck coined the term growth mindset, which is the belief that one’s intelligence and abilities can be developed through effort, learning, and practice. It emphasizes embracing challenges and seeing setbacks as opportunities for growth, rather than indicators of failure.

This is the perfect mindset to bring to your reviews.

Adopting a growth mindset transforms each review into an opportunity to learn, to teach, and to grow. It becomes an exercise for sharpening your thinking, leveling up your skills, and becoming a better teammate.

But in order to make the most out of your reviews, you need to be intentional about how you approach them.

Approach to Reviewing

A meaningful review is a deep dive, the opposite of the quick “LGTM”. It takes conscious effort.

A good review is more than style, finding typos or bugs. Doing it properly requires the reviewer to slow down, think, understand and engage with the code. In order to do so, you need to deploy your skills and intuition, and you’ll learn that much more from the experience.

While a full breakdown of review techniques is out of scope for this article, it’s worth touching on a few key principles.

Key Elements of Effective Code Reviews

Effective code reviews require examining how the code reads, behaves and integrates with the larger system. Consider its long-term impact on the codebase. Would you feel confident owning and modifying this code in the future?

When reviewing, consider these key qualities:

Actively evaluating these qualities, even without explicit comments, sharpens your judgment. This practice trains your eye and rapidly builds your coding intuition.

These are the same qualities we strive for in our own work. By reviewing others’ code, we improve our ability to evaluate our own.

Taking the time to really dig into someone else’s code exercises the same muscles you rely on in your own work.

Giving Feedback That Helps

After evaluating the code, the next step is sharing your insights, typically through comments. Comments, like all feedback, should be delivered clearly, directly, and with care.

Truly helpful feedback requires time and effort, demanding a solid grasp of the issue to articulate it clearly, often with examples or suggestions to clarify your perspective for the author. This effort, though sometimes challenging, has the added benefit of deepening your own understanding.

With a clear understanding of the issue, the next crucial step is how to deliver your feedback. Show that you understand the author’s intent and that you are there to help. Be mindful of your language and make the comments strictly about the code, not the person who wrote it. This builds trust and makes feedback productive.

Don’t judge. Teach. It’s a learning process. ― Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Some quick examples:

❌ “This is wrong, use map.”
✅ “Would a map work better here instead of the for loop? It might make the intent clearer since we’re transforming the list.”

❌ “Too complex.”
✅ “This logic works, but it’s a bit dense, maybe extracting the retry logic into another function can make it clearer?”

Learning from Feedback

Thoughtful reviewing enhances our skills, but what happens when we’re on the receiving end?

A good review is a gift, offering a fresh perspective that can reveal gaps, suggest alternatives, and sharpen your thinking through insightful questions.

That said, it doesn’t always feel good. Sometimes we’re proud of what we’ve built, and critical feedback can sting.

Adopting a growth mindset is particularly crucial when receiving feedback. See it as a learning opportunity, not a judgment of your abilities. Start by assuming good intent. Even blunt comments often hold value, focus on the substance. What did the reviewer notice that you overlooked?

Take time to process the feedback. Approach suggestions with curiosity, even if you don’t agree at first. Ask: does this make the code better? If it does, incorporate it. If not, pause, ask yourself why, then follow up with a clarifying question; it often opens the door to a productive conversation instead of a defensive reaction.

The reviewer took the time to help you improve. Show appreciation, and invite honest, even nitpicky feedback. That creates trust, and feedback is one of the most direct, powerful ways we learn.

With regular collaboration in this way, trust deepens, leading to a reliance on clear, thoughtful critique that benefits everyone and improves the codebase.

What Doesn’t Belong in a Review

There’s a reason I haven’t talked about style, formatting, and syntax until now:

Anything that can be automated, should be automated.

There’s no reason to spend a human’s time on something a machine can do better, faster, and more reliably. The purpose of code review is to think deeply about the code, how it works, how it fits, how it communicates. Not about whitespace or semicolons.

Setting up all this automation is a significant topic on its own, far beyond the scope of this article. However, here are the essentials I want to highlight.

At a minimum, every pull request should be backed by a CI(Continuous Integration) pipeline that runs:

You can also run some of these checks locally with git hooks (pre-commit or pre-push). But CI should always be there as the ultimate safety net.

This kind of automation saves your team a lot of time. Reviewers can skip over the mechanical stuff and focus on what really matters.

Going a step further, teams can use static analysis tools or even leverage LLMs for a first pass. These tools are constantly improving and can spot bugs or complex areas before a human reviewer even sees them.

The better your automation setup, the more room there is for the real review, the kind that truly makes the code better and helps the developers grow.

Code Reviews and Team Culture

We’ve seen how the right mindset and approach can transform code reviews into a powerful tool for growth, however, to truly maximize its benefits, a supportive team culture is essential.

When I talk about team culture here, I mean the shared values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that shape how we work together.

Team culture is extremely important. It shapes how we function day to day, including how we review each other’s code.

Code reviews and team culture reinforce each other. When a team values quality, ownership, and direct feedback, good reviews become natural, and in turn, good reviews strengthen these values.

When reviews don’t happen organically and require leadership intervention, it often signals an unhealthy, potentially siloed or overly competitive culture. A reluctance to review often indicates a lack of shared goals, it’s important to send a clear message for collaboration: we win as a team.

We need a team culture that provides a safe space for open, honest feedback, where everyone not only feels comfortable, but encouraged to share their thoughts, where continuous improvement is the norm, and where the team is committed to helping each other grow. This builds the foundation of true collaboration.

Clearly communicating and upholding the team’s core values, especially those related to feedback and quality, is paramount. Everyone can improve, and no code is flawless.

Encourage everyone to review as much as they can. People should feel comfortable commenting on changes, regardless of direct ownership. Reviews are a fantastic way to share knowledge, and make teams come together, make use of them.

It’s especially important for leaders to live and model these values. If you are a leader, what you say and do sets the tone. Ask for feedback regularly, and celebrate when you get it. Be open about your gaps, ask questions publicly. Acknowledge when someone’s comment helped you.

I’ve been lucky to work with some amazing teams, and I’ve seen firsthand how a strong culture of feedback can transform the way we work together. When everyone is committed to helping each other grow, teams level up quickly, and the experience becomes deeply enjoyable.

In contrast, I’ve also been part of teams that don’t value feedback, and it shows. The difference is night and day, with collaboration suffering and the work becoming less enjoyable – factors that have ultimately influenced my career choices.

Team culture is a fascinating topic, for further reading on building effective team dynamics and feedback practices, I highly recommend the books Extreme Ownership and Radical Candor.

Reviews Matter Even More in the Age of AI

LLMs are getting better at writing code. More and more of our code is now written with their help. That changes things, making code review even more important than ever.

You’re not just reviewing what your teammates write anymore. You’re reviewing what the LLM writes too. But here’s the thing: it’s still your code. The AI might have written the words, but you prompted it, you accepted it, and you’re responsible for it. You are still the author. That same discipline still applies.

The pace of development with LLMs is fast. Generating the code isn’t a bottleneck, reviewing it is. So improving your ability to review code quickly and effectively is an absolute necessity. It’s already a critical skill, and it’s only becoming more vital as these tools get faster and more capable.

Reviews in this new era should shift toward deeper thinking: are we solving the right problem? Does this change fit cleanly into the rest of the system? Is it correct and maintainable? The surface may look polished, but it’s your job to look underneath.

AI can help us move faster, but only if we stay thoughtful and accountable for what we build with it.

Final Thoughts

Code reviews aren’t about catching typos or proving who’s smarter. They’re about building better software together.

A good review sharpens your thinking and builds your skills, especially when approached with a growth mindset that sees every review as an opportunity to learn and improve. It shows that you care about the code and your teammates, and it strengthens your team’s culture by fostering trust and open communication.

If you treat reviews like a checkbox, you miss all of that. But if you approach them as a chance to learn, to teach, and to collaborate, they become one of the most valuable parts of your workflow.

This is a skill you can practice and improve. Review often. Ask questions. Share what you see. Invite feedback on your own work. The more you engage, the more you and your team will grow.

But it takes the right mindset, intentionality, curiosity, and care to truly benefit from both giving and receiving reviews.

In a world where AI can generate code faster than ever, reviews are more important, not less. They are our chance to pause, reflect, and ensure what we’re building is right, not just fast.

In the end, great teams aren’t built just on smart people. They’re built on trust, feedback, and a shared commitment to making things better.