The key to building the quality in is to make making changes very cheap

The power of a continuous code review after each LoC change is that you’d never feel that you’re nitpicking when asking for a change. The shortest possible feedback loop and review in immediate context make making changes virtually free.

You feel you’re nitpicking when the work has already been done and change is not cheap. Especially when there’s latency in communication between the actors which would involve the author context switching and going back to the work they already did in order to rework.

That makes an enormous cumulative difference in the amount of quality you’re able to build in with pairing/mobbing and providing verbal, face-to-face feedback vs. discontinuous, high latency, PR code reviews, and providing feedback in a written form via some online tool.

The system is what drives the behavior and incentivizes or inhibits our ability to provide rich and timely feedback that is a precondition for building the quality in.

Long feedback loops pile up in the system our unfulfilled wishes about how the code should’ve looked like.