Twenty Years of Stacking Commits

This article reflects on two decades of experience with code review tools, from git format-patch and mailing lists to Gerrit and GitHub. The author argues that despite evolving interfaces, the fundamental unit of review should remain the individual commit, not the entire pull request. Gerrit's model of reviewing each commit independently is praised for enabling granular feedback and incremental progress, while GitHub's PR-centric approach is criticized for creating monolithic reviews. The piece also touches on the challenges of UX friction and the rise of AI agents pushing code faster than humans can review. It is a tech-focused analysis of software engineering workflows and tooling.