what is code review ?- Csmates.com
Regular code reviews are a very useful tool in development as peoples tend to overlook the mistake that they have implemented themselves. Code reviews also help to spread expert knowledge throughout a development team. The suggestions and ideas which evolve during review sessions often take the process big steps forward.
Using various reviews, inspections , and code walk-thorough ina software development project almost always has a positive effect on software quality, readability, and the case of understanding.
Rules for code review and walkthrough
Some of the important rules for conducting effective code reviews and walk-through are:
- The duration of a code review should be of a reasonable duration. A balance should be struck between the length of the review and the attention span of the reviewers.
- Participants must commit not only to attend the actual review but also to read the material and attend a follow-up meeting to hear the presenter’s response to comments made at the initial code review.
- Meeting coordinators must not let the meeting degenerate into a problem-solving session. Problems should be identified and assigned as action items to discuss in a follow-up meeting after a solution has been devised.
- The code review is designed to detect errors in the code or in the design, not to correct them.
Benefits of Code Reviews and Walkthroughs
- The earlier bugs are found in the life cycle of a product, the cheaper and easier they are to fix.
- If someone else looks at your code or design, they are likely to find mistakes you missed.
- When you know that someone else is going to be looking at your code, you are a lo more likely to tidy it up and make sure there is accurate and up-to-date documentation.
- You can learn a lot by reading other people’s code.
- More than one person who is familiar with a program is the best insurance against “Mack Truck Syndrome”, which is when the only person who understands the software gets hit by a truck, leaves the company, or is for some reason not available for documentation.
- It can be a means of establishing quality metrics, so one can measure the effectiveness of different quality processes.
- The process of explaining your software to someone else can help you actually review your own program, rather than just looking at and seeing what you expect or want to see.
- When done right, code and design reviews can save time and improve quality over the entire project life cycle.
Limitations of Code Reviews and Walkthroughs
The disadvantage of code reviews is that they take time, not only for the person actively working on the project but also for other people who are usually under deadline pressure themselves. Despite the fact that there are numerous studies showing that the overall number of human-hours spent on a project is lower when reviews are properly done, there is the constant temptation to bet that there really aren’t any problems. That means waiting until the code is written and being debugged to try to find problems.
Originally published at https://www.csmates.com.
