Technology Transfer - since 1986
Leading Edge Information Technology Education
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance...
Derek Bok
Online Events
Due to time zones, events presented by American speakers will be spread over more days, and will take place in the afternoon from 2 pm to 6 pm Italian time
Building a Data and AI Strategy for a Data-Driven Enterprise
ONLINE LIVE STREAMING
Apr 07 - Apr 08, 2025
By: Mike Ferguson
Introduction to Generative AI for Java Developers
ONLINE LIVE STREAMING
Apr 16 - Apr 17, 2025
By: Frank Greco
Generative AI:
Creating a LLM Chatbot for Business
ONLINE LIVE STREAMING
Apr 28 - Apr 29, 2025
By: Ivan Reznikov
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Management
ONLINE LIVE STREAMING
May 05 - May 06, 2025
By: Derek Strauss
Practical Guidelines for Implementing Data Products
ONLINE LIVE STREAMING
May 08 - May 09, 2025
By: Mike Ferguson
Generative AI
Unlocking Business Potential using Agentic AI with LangChain and LangGraph
ONLINE LIVE STREAMING
May 15 - May 16, 2025
By: Ivan Reznikov
Upcoming Events
January 2025
Upcoming events by this speaker:
June 27, 2025 Online live streaming:
Designing, developing and deploying a Microservices Architecture
The sense and nonsense of pull requests
Recently, I posted my doubts about the effectiveness of pull requests on LinkedIn. Surprisingly, my simple post led to a bonfire of discussions and eventually had over 350,000 views. I struck a nerve.
So, what is a pull request? Essentially, a pull request is a proposal to merge changes from one code branch to another. Other people working on the codebase review and discuss this proposal before integrating the changes into the other branch, usually the main one. This procedure allows collaborators to reason about the quality of the proposed changes and, in doing so, uphold the quality of the entire codebase.
Sounds straightforward, right?
Pull requests make perfect sense when you don’t trust the changes proposed to your codebase. The most common scenario is open-source projects. In open-source projects, anyone can suggest improvements to the codebase. This is precisely how and why open-source works.
Open-source projects reap the wisdom of the crowd. As one of the authors of the open-source framework Easy.ts, I see this in practice every day. We don’t always personally know the people who propose changes, so we can’t always value their experience or personal preferences, which often are even a matter of personal taste.
This is where pull requests come in handy. They allow us to discuss people’s coding decisions before merging their code into our projects. It’s an excellent opportunity to share skills and create an understanding of different approaches.