J-Fall 2022: Robert Scholte & Mary Gouseti – Open discussion: Premises and promises of code review

Are the code reviews always about hunting for mistakes or patiently waiting for someone to say LGTM? Have you ever wondered if this is really worth your time? You are not alone, we understand. There’s no achievement for making the most review comments and the value of code reviews is often overlooked. It doesn’t have to be like that, have you ever been writing code that doesn’t feel quite right but at that moment it feels that you can’t improve it any more? But then with a few review comments, everything fits and new possibilities are unlocked! Code review should be and can be in your own interest. If you are not convinced, here are two arguments: everybody makes mistakes and nobody wants to introduce bugs, so why not double check the code, the code is read much more often than it’s written so reviewing the code aka reading it can evaluate the code in a way the initial writer cannot. Not everything should be solved by a code review, a reviewer should focus on the aspects of code that require human intelligence, otherwise it’s a waste of their time.. All checks that can be done by static analysis and can be fixed with proper tooling should be automated and thus should not be part of code review. In the case of delivering good quality code, is code review the preferred methodology or are there other more efficient ways to get the same or even better results? Is there more we can learn from code reviews? Robert and Mary are both experienced software developers and have seen a lot of good and bad things regarding this topic. With an open space type of discussion with the audience we will share knowledge and inspire all participants. Note: this is an open space discussion. Audience participation is encouraged.