# How Code Reviews Support Chromium's Code Quality and Team Resilience

DevFeed: [How Code Reviews Support Chromium's Code Quality and Team Resilience](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/code-reviews-for-fun-and-profit-35513.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://meowni.ca/posts/code-reviews/>)

Author: Monica Dinculescu

Published: 2014-03-31T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Monica Dinculescu](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/monica-dinculescu.md>)

Topics: [Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code.md>), [Chromium](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/chromium.md>), [code style](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code-style.md>), [bus factor](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/bus-factor.md>)

Tags: [bus-factor](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/bus-factor.md>), [chromium](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/chromium.md>), [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [code-reviews](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code-reviews.md>), [code-style](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code-style.md>)

## AI overview

The article explains how Chromium uses code reviews and style guides to manage a large, actively changing codebase. It argues that review helps catch broken or poor-quality code, maintain consistency, and reduce reliance on a small number of contributors.

## Source excerpt

Stats: a preamble I've been reading too much about March Madness brackets, so I thought I had to run some numbers around here like the cool kids do. Get your umbrella out, it's about to rain cold facts. In the history of time, Chromium has had 205,095 commits made by 1,943 contributors representing 7,431,088 lines of code. In the last 30 days, there have been 5021 commits, by 637 contributors, including 53 new hoomans. I did some advanced Nate Silver analysis here for you, and that's at least 167 commits and 1+ new committers a day. On average, that's at least 7 commits an hour. Every hour. All of the hours. That's an imperial ton of new code being added, by what it seems like new people. Imagine if everyone could commit code willy-nilly. Are you imagining a minefield? You should. Code reviews ftw Good news for our browser using audience! Chromium isn't a minefield, and on top of it, has pretty awesome looking code. This comes from the fact that any code changes need to be reviewed and blessed before they can land on the master branch. More eyes means less bugs means you're less likely to commit broken code and break the internet. And you really don't want to break the internet. Even if you have tests, and everything is going your way, you can write correct, but genuinely shitty code. 7 million lines of kinda-shitty code is not something anyone wants to work with, and are worth investing a little time in fixing. Code reviews also bring up the bus factor, which is my favourite sinister nerd metaphor. You know, the buuuuuus factor. The number of people that can get run over by a bus on a team before that team is royally and epically screwed. If all the code that you write has been closely read by a different person, then you're probably ok getting run over by a bus every once in a while. But still, you probably shouldn't. Who would feed your cat? Consistent code is the best code Code style guides are sooper neat, and are a huge part of code reviews, because ain't nobo