What are nits, and why are they bad?

In software engineering, the term "nit" refers to minor, often stylistic, code review comments that do not significantly impact the overall quality of the code but can slow down the review process and affect engineering velocity. Despite being defined as non-blocking and trivial issues by frameworks such as Google's "Standard of Code Review" and the Conventional Comments framework, the ambiguity surrounding "nits" leads to inefficiencies and inconsistencies in code reviews. An analysis of 25,000 nit-prefixed comments from Graphite revealed that many of these comments are stylistic suggestions, which could be automated using linters and style guides. The article argues for the elimination of style-based nits to improve the focus and efficiency of code reviews, suggesting that engineering teams should encode style rules into automated tools, thus preserving review time for more substantive discussions. By reducing the prevalence of nits, teams can enhance their software development processes by increasing the signal-to-noise ratio in code reviews and allowing engineers to release changes more swiftly.

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