IME face to face communication gives the impression that communication happened. The impression that a problem was discussed and solved. When talking people barely listen and just wait for their turn to speak and feel like they are contributing.
Written communication can be re-read, it can be looked at your own pace when you're focused. It can be challenged with comments and it's much harder to hand wave the questions away.
I honestly don't know why I have to explain this, it is, as I said, shockingly obvious.
First, the mega obvious: if I leave a PR comment, and you ignore it for several days, resolving the conversation will take several days! If I walk over to your desk and speak to you, now, that doesn't happen. Especially if we resolve the issue while I'm standing there, and I watch you type "git push".
Moving on...
In a Github PR (perhaps other interfaces are better!) you cannot comment on a line that wasn't changed. This can make it very difficult to point out problems caused by the way that added/changed code interacts with code nearby. It forces the reviewer to describe an outline of the issue, or paste bits of code and mention line numbers. It's possible to do this well, but it takes focus and clear writing. Folks who are not good writers, or who are communicating in a second language, struggle mightily with this.
...but if I can walk over to your desk (or you to mine), where I can point at the nearby code with my finger, there is no ambiguity. No need for careful English composition. No back-and-forth. I just point.
Honestly, have any of you in this thread ever had a face-to-face conversation?
IME face to face communication gives the impression that communication happened. The impression that a problem was discussed and solved. When talking people barely listen and just wait for their turn to speak and feel like they are contributing.
Written communication can be re-read, it can be looked at your own pace when you're focused. It can be challenged with comments and it's much harder to hand wave the questions away.