Re: What is code review? (Java code review)
www wrote:
Hi,
My boss just told me a concept I didn't know. (I am middle level Java
programmer.) -- "code review".
According to what I heard, "code review" is somebody reads the thousands
lines of code written by other person and try to find if there are some
errors (logic errors, I guess, since the code at least can be compiled
and run).
I feel this is crazy!!! Since the reviewer has to "read" the original
code author's mind and make sure the code does what the author wants and
no hidden surprises! How this could be possible?! This would be
extremely time consuming and nobody knows better about the code than the
author.
My boss says this is very common practice in software engineer development.
Is this true? Or my understanding from my boss is wrong?
I've only participated in informal code reviews, in which the objective
is not to look at every line, but to find the lines that should be
looked at.
There is often a mix of two high level objectives:
1. General search for errors.
2. Verification of code quality.
Both aspects should focus on problems that cannot be detected by the
software development tools.
For example, I would spend far more time on synchronization and
multi-threading issues than on aspects where bugs would be found in the
first few minutes of testing. There is no point in spending human time
checking whether the indentation is correct, but no computer program can
evaluate whether identifiers are meaningful.
Remember that readability is an important aspect of code quality. Code
that can only be maintained by the author is of limited value in most
organizations. I don't think there is any automated test for readability
that works anywhere near as well as seeing what happens when a
non-author programmer tries to read the code.
This is a good time to review your documentation imagining another
programmer trying to understand your code.
Patricia