This is great advice and isn't followed often enough, especially when reviewing code written by people new to an organization/team:
> If you see something nice in the CL, tell the developer, especially when they addressed one of your comments in a great way. Code reviews often just focus on mistakes, but they should offer encouragement and appreciation for good practices, as well. It’s sometimes even more valuable, in terms of mentoring, to tell a developer what they did right than to tell them what they did wrong.
I've seen cases where people got hundreds of comments (many of them minor, nitpicky) from more experienced developers and were discouraged by the sheer number of them. That most new developers naturally suffer from imposter syndrome is not helped at all by 100% critical code reviews.
> If you see something nice in the CL, tell the developer, especially when they addressed one of your comments in a great way. Code reviews often just focus on mistakes, but they should offer encouragement and appreciation for good practices, as well. It’s sometimes even more valuable, in terms of mentoring, to tell a developer what they did right than to tell them what they did wrong.
I've seen cases where people got hundreds of comments (many of them minor, nitpicky) from more experienced developers and were discouraged by the sheer number of them. That most new developers naturally suffer from imposter syndrome is not helped at all by 100% critical code reviews.