Well said Kaxil. That reads like a really nice nostalgic story. Takes me back to my very first PR too: https://github.com/apache/airflow/pull/27677 which was a one line doc PR, with a *request changes *on it, such funny stories keep us going all the time!
Thanks & Regards, Amogh Desai On Tue, Jun 16, 2026 at 2:04 AM Kaxil Naik <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey all, > > While we are talking about contribution quality and ownership in various > separate threads, I do want to say that demanding reviews are one of the > best things this project has, and I'd hate for us to come out of these > various conversations having quietly lowered the bar to feel more > welcoming. > > The reviews I have learned the most from weren't the ones that approved my > code. They were the ones that asked "why this way?", "what does this do to > the person debugging it in two years?", "is this even the problem we should > be solving?" Ash's reviews are the example I keep coming back to. We > disagree plenty, and he's caught things in my own PRs I'd have merged > otherwise. Those questions take real time and care, there is no metric or > leaderboard that rewards asking them, and they are exactly the judgment > that doesn't easily automate. > > After his review comments, I often asked myself why I hadn't thought of > that approach. > > Bolke did the same to me in my early days ( > https://github.com/apache/airflow/pull/2810). The review stung at the time > and made me a better engineer. Most long-time contributors here probably > have a story like it. > > Holding a high bar isn't unwelcoming. It's how contributors actually grow, > and how the codebase stays something we can all still reason about. Waving > work through to dodge friction helps no one, least of all the contributor. > > To be clear, this is a stance on the bar, not on any one way of delivering > feedback. I just don't want the two collapsed into each other, because the > answer to a tone problem is never less rigor. > > Thanks to Ash, and to everyone here who puts this kind of care into > reviews. It's a lot of unsung work, and a big part of why I still trust > this codebase. > > Regards, > Kaxil >
