Rubber Stamp Review
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
A rubber stamp review is approving a pull request without actually reading the code — just clicking 'approve' and moving on. It's the LGTM of laziness. 'Looks good to me' becomes 'Looks to me' and eventually just 'Looks.' The PR could contain a Bitcoin miner and it'd still get approved. It completely defeats the purpose of code review but hey, at least the CI pipeline is green.
Real Talk
A rubber stamp review is a code review that provides approval without meaningful examination of the changes. It's a process anti-pattern that undermines code quality, security, and knowledge sharing — the primary benefits of code review. Causes include review fatigue, time pressure, large PRs, and trust without verification. Counter-measures include review checklists, PR size limits, and review metrics.
When You'll Hear This
"That PR had 2,000 lines and was approved in 3 minutes — total rubber stamp." / "If your reviews are all rubber stamps, just skip the ceremony and push to main."
Related Terms
Code Review
A code review is when another developer reads your code before it gets merged, looking for bugs, bad practices, or anything confusing.
Code Review Bingo
Code Review Bingo is the game you play during code reviews where you spot classic patterns: 'TODO: fix this later' (it never gets fixed), commented-out cod...
LGTM (Looks Good To Me)
LGTM is the two-word code review approval that can mean anything from 'I carefully reviewed every line and this is perfect' to 'I glanced at the title and...
Nit
A nit (short for nitpick) is a tiny, non-blocking code review comment about something that doesn't really matter but someone felt strongly enough to mentio...
Pull Request (PR)
A pull request is like raising your hand in class and saying 'Hey, I made some changes — can someone check my work before we make it official?