An empirical study of design discussions in code review
Farida El Zanaty, Toshiki HIRAO, Shane McIntosh, Akinori Ihara, Kenichi Matsumoto · 2018
Background: Code review is a well-established software quality practice where developers critique each others' changes. A shift towards automated detection of low-level issues (e.g., integration with linters) has, in theory, freed reviewers up to focus on higher level issues, such as software design. Yet in practice, little is known about the extent to which design is discussed during code review.