A Doomed Code Review

A developer shares a personal story about accumulating 3,000 lines of code without intermediate reviews, then working with their code buddy to salvage the situation. The solution involved splitting the large changeset into nine focused reviews organized by cohesion, giving the reviewer a high-level overview upfront, and finishing with a pair review session instead of lengthy written back-and-forth. Key lessons include owning up to the mistake early, creating disjunct reviews with introductory context, deciding on a logical review order, and keeping momentum by meeting in person to resolve comments efficiently.