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If a production bug passed through a change you approved, revisit the change with the incident in mind, identify what you missed, acknowledge your part to the author, and adjust one review habit that addresses that specific miss. The goal is to learn—not to promise that you will never miss anything.
Reopen the change and ask what you needed to notice
Once the immediate incident is being handled, reread the change privately. Instead of asking only why the bug happened, ask: What would I have needed to notice? Keep the review focused on the actual failure rather than turning it into a general judgment about your ability or the author’s work.
That question is central to Asael Shinder’s advice in “The Bug Went Through a Review You Approved”. The DEV Community listing says it was posted on October 2 but does not show a year, so the date cannot be pinned down further from that listing.
Identify the specific kind of miss
Be precise about the gap your review left. Shinder’s examples point to several possibilities:
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- An untested edge case: You approved a change without considering what would happen with an empty list.
- Reading without running: You inspected the code but did not execute it, so behavior that a run might have revealed stayed hidden.
- Unexamined callers: You did not check how other parts of the code used the changed function or behavior.
- A problem outside the diff: The relevant condition may have been in surrounding code rather than in the lines that changed.
- Attention had slipped: You may have skimmed or missed a detail rather than applying a particular check.
These are examples, not a claim that every escaped defect fits one category. Use the incident to name the gap that actually applies.
Acknowledge shared responsibility with the author
Tell the author that you share responsibility for the review miss, and offer to look at the fix together. A concise acknowledgment can keep the incident from becoming something the author has to carry alone. It does not require assigning equal blame or making claims about who caused the defect; it recognizes that your approval was part of the process.
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Change one habit that addresses the miss
Choose a small, repeatable adjustment tied directly to what you identified. If the missed case was an empty collection, check empty cases earlier in future reviews. If fatigue led you to skim, decline late-day reviews when you are too tired to assess them carefully. If callers were overlooked, make checking relevant callers part of the review when behavior or an interface changes.
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Do not use perfection as the measure
Shinder’s advice is not that a reviewer can catch every problem. Reviews can catch many issues and still miss one. The practical aim is to understand this miss and make a different one more likely next time—not to promise perfect review or treat one escaped bug as proof that review has no value.
“The aim is not to never miss anything. It is to miss a different thing next time.”
This is Shinder’s guidance, not a measured finding about how much any particular review practice reduces production defects.
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