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Stop Using Pull Requests (a4al6a.substack.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by codeinabox@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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TL;DR

  • Pull requests were designed for open source contributions from untrusted strangers. Applying them to trusted teams is a category error.
  • Peer-reviewed research shows code review’s primary value is knowledge transfer, not bug detection. Less than 15% of review comments relate to actual bugs.
  • Async PR workflows mean your code spends 86-99% of its lead time waiting. One organisation spent 130,000 hours in a single year waiting on PRs that received zero comments.
  • DORA research across 36,000+ professionals shows trunk-based development correlates with dramatically higher software delivery performance, and faster code reviews alone improve performance by 50%.
  • The alternative is T*D: Test-Driven Development (build quality in), Trunk-Based Development (integrate continuously), and Team-focused Development (review during creation, not after).
  • The transition is gradual: optimise PRs first, adopt Ship/Show/Ask, then move to pairing and trunk-based development as trust and automation mature.-
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[-] felsiq@piefed.zip 17 points 2 days ago

For anyone else who might get clickbaited by the headline: this is not meant for open source, they’re only talking about small corporate teams

[-] codeinabox@programming.dev 6 points 2 days ago

Thank you! I've updated the post with the TL;DR from the article.

this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
-11 points (39.2% liked)

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