[ FROM THE BLOG ]
How we measure a good pull request
We stopped counting lines and started counting how long a reviewer needs. What we look at instead.
Tobias Reyes
7 min
Engineering
A pull request written by an agent can be huge without being useful. We tried counting lines, files and tests, and none of it told us whether a person would be glad to review it.
Time to understand
We ask reviewers how long it took before they knew what the change was for. Under a minute is good.
Surprises
We count the comments that begin with why. Every why is a place where the description or the change failed to explain itself.
What changed for us
Hearth now writes the description before it writes the code, and rewrites it at the end. It is a small change that cut review questions by about a third.
