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 hat Code Review Changed Me During my senior year of college, I decided to contribute to an open source project. I picked a small “problem” and submitted my solution as a pull request (PR) on GitHub. My code worked, passed the tests, and honestly, I thought I did a good job. But the first comment that came gave me pause: “Your function is great, but it’s a bit too much work. Can you consider reducing it to a single responsibility?” This comment seemed simple, but I realized at that moment: It’s not enough for code to just work. It also needs to be readable, maintainable, and understandable to others. Later comments pointed out that variable names were vague, I was skipping some test cases, and I lacked modularity. The comments were not destructive, but they were clear. The criticisms were open-ended questions: “Why was this part done this way?” “Have you considered this approach as an alternative?” I was initially discouraged, but when I went back and reviewed my code again, I agre...

 Last summer, while working in the US with the Work and Travel program, I sent my shift change request to my manager via Slack: “Can I start my shift a little later tomorrow due to a personal situation?” Although the message seemed polite and explanatory to me, the short and distant “Noted” response I received bothered me. When we spoke face to face the next day, my manager said that the message was perceived as an order, not a request. At that moment, I deeply understood McLuhan’s words, “The medium is the message,” because if the same message were delivered face to face or on a different platform like email, my tone and intention would have been much clearer. A similar situation occurred during a misunderstanding I experienced on Instagram: The sentence I shared, “It’s been a crazy trip,” was a nostalgic and humorous farewell, but some of my friends thought I was sending a depressing message. However, the same content could have made a much more accurate impression if it were sup...