Pablo
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pacumo.bsky.social
Pablo
@pacumo.bsky.social
Developer by day, dad by night.

e0x engineer, I sometimes share my day or learnings (or food and garden)

I have a small podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/7AMbqJv7HCdSDiTG1nvUaa?si=Sr5rRrWwTKmbtZiDeJMivQ
The times I have managed to convince people to give the higher echelons a shot, I have always been positively surprised at the outcome.

But there is quite a strong inertia pushing towards scatter/gather approaches and individual, rather siloed work with a PR as a deliverable.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
The times I have managed to convince people to give the higher echelons a shot, I have always been positively surprised at the outcome.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
In order of preference:
- Teaming/swarming
- Pairing always/most of the time
- TBD, small commits, tested, with feature branches, continuously pushed to main
- Ship show ask
- Collaborative reviews
- Async reviews
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Lastly, I gear my effort and optimizations toward improving the flow of one piece of work, PRs are on the way of that.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM

- We are a collaborative industry that would rather stare at a screen on our own, in chase of individual flow.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
But, I acknowledge that:
- Pair/ensemble all or most of the time is scary for a lot of people
- Pair/ensemble can be tiring (it also can be uplifting)
- We, as an industry, in general have trouble with interaction.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
If I could choose everything, I would use a swarming/teaming strategy, with trunk based development . Reviews are done on the spot, by multiple people and ideas and alternatives are all tested/codes before choosing the correct one.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
At the very least I would advocate for a a ship/show/ask strategy. I would also encourage to do all review synchronously, as a Pair exercise.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Also, all of those are better alleviated with training and upskilling than by PRs (which I don't think are really geared for learning).
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Catching bugs and defects by having a tired set of eyes that would rather be doing the job they will be judged by (most times) rather than reading other people's code is wishful thinking, which I believe is caused due to survivors bias.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
With regards to code quality, bugs, defects, etc. I don't believe PRs are a good vehicle either. Code quality is super subjective, although it can allow a measure of 'control' to have PRs.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
On top of that, and I agree that learnings can be found in the most unsuspecting places, I don't think most PRs will teach anything. Although some do.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Now, granted, you can ask the PR submitter to create an elaborate document, with a top down view and an explainer of the highlights, but that means time and effort (and a 'paused' feature). And that might alleviate some of it.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
I also believe, but this is quite personal, that PRs are a dreadful vehicle for learning, the tools we have to review code are not geared towards learning, but rather towards line by line analysis.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
That handoff now has at least two queuing times (if all goes well) one for pick-up one for merge/response. Merging before the PR does alleviate this, but still leaves at least one handoff and queue, in the optimal case.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Reviews are a handoff at least, if everything goes well. We are (I am?) pathologically incapable of not picking up the next task, what is worse, we are encouraged to take the next task.
October 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Wait, a Junior, a Senior and I appeared on Short Ruby News?

I should play it cool, but... OMG 😱😱
October 28, 2025 at 3:19 PM
pragdave
pragdave.me
October 28, 2025 at 6:54 AM
- Thoughts about what the role of software developer should be.
- And, thoughts on why so many concepts don't have a consensus understanding among tech professionals.

More here: spotify.link/T3qbxWemPXb

--
24 - on Misunderstood concepts in tech (sort of) with Steven and Dave
spotify.link
October 28, 2025 at 6:54 AM