Re: Do you do formal code reviews?

[Rory Hewitt <rory.hewitt@xxxxxxxxx>]

That last paragraph was very nicely put, John.

FWIW, we'd love to go with 'extreme programming" or "pair programming" or
whatever is best, but we have neither the manpower nor the time.

We don't do explicit code reviews, except with newer developers. But every
developer can ask someone else to check their code, and we all do from time
to time, even me (and I always think I'm right!)... :)

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 10:13 AM, Voris, John <john.voris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> If you are serious about Code Reviews, I recomment the book "Best Kept
> Secrets of Peer Code Review".  It is a pretty good and a quick read.
> http://smartbear.com/best-kept-secrets-of-peer-code-review/ It's a free
> book, or free pdf , or free kindle.
> Smart Bear Software sells a QA and Code Review product, but this free
> book of theirs is unbiased.
>
> What I found interesting in the book were actual studies which included
> eye-movement studies which found . . .
>  code review meetings are not as good as single-person private-time
> readings
>  code review meetings where the programmer has to defend his code
> before a group can be counter-productive
>  after 60 to 90 minutes, an individual or group just stops finding any
> more defects.  So timebox the review process.
>  the initial read of a program catches most defects
>  having a standard for code style / legibility helps find defects
>  and of course, what Agile and XP programming cite, use pair
> programming (two people working on one PC , reviewing code real-time,
> and creating tests as code develops)
>         is always best for when a section of code is hard or "just has
> to work" (think NASA).
>
> My own opinion is that a code review is nice, but designing or
> retrofitting programs for * testability and * separation of UI from
> logic has a better payoff in quality.
> But if code reviews push that cultural change, go for it.
>
> But ask yourself, is the main goal for of the code reviews to improve
> quality, gain system insight, change past practices, or what?  If you
> had to pick one, which is it?
>
>
> P.S. For us, our SOX procedure has a one-person QA - Code Review to
> review changes prior to promotion into User Acceptance Testing.
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